Paper and Rubber

Clothing without cloth

Welcome to the first exxxplicit episode of the show! Tee hee.

The most obvious part of clothing is that it is, by and large, made of cloth. And whether that cloth is animal, vegetal, or chemical, it is treated in much the same way. It is sewn together with needle and thread. It can be hemmed and adjusted. It can be laundered. It can be patched. That is what we expect from clothing that is made from cloth.

But there are two big exceptions to these rules. And the first one. Was, admittedly, a fad. But in its time, it was larger than we could maybe fathom.

Promotional dresses from Campbells Soup and Jolly Green Giant. I want them both

Around the 60s. There was this moment in youth culture that was primed for something new. It was a bona fide explosion of color and trends and ideas. Lilly Pulitzer and Emilio Pucci put out wild new patterns to try- in a way that was totally culturally acceptable. It wasn't fringy to be bold and bright. There was a desire to dip a toe in. To experiment with clothes. Perhaps without too much investment. And before fast fashion. There was paper.

An RFK dress put out by his campaign, and a so-called “poster dress” of Bob Dylan

Airline stewardess dresses! For TWA and for India Air. Apparently these fell apart and high altitudes oh no.

The Museum of Art and Design has the paper dress exhibit up for another month! You can see a lot of these dresses there.

And by the way, as an aside, a lot of my favorite designers continued to play with paper, long after the fad ended:

Hussein Chalayan’s 1999 paper dress (a matching paper jacket was worn by Bjork on the album cover of Post)

Tyvek paper coat by Issey Miyake

2009 paper dresses by designers/ power couple Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Van Saene

Truly though, the episode is only a little bit about paper. Most of it is devoted to another non-cloth material: Latex. Hence why this episode is not family-friendly!

An illustration from Bizarre Magazine, by John Willie

I spoke with Victoria, a professional dominatrix, along with fashion designers Edna St. Louis (check out her work! Doja Cat is a fan) and latex innovator Jessica Walsh.

If you’re feeling inspired by this story and want to invest in some latex, two recommended companies are Westward Bound ( UK) and Busted Brand (LA)

Other Articles Of Interest

• Mikaela Dery’s profile of SC103- is a case study of what it takes to be innovative and independent in fashion the 21st century

• I’ve been thinking about Ellen Sampson’s experiments with clothing and wear patters. You can read her philosophy thesis about how we get attached to shoes

• John Waters on what it means to wear Rei Kawakubo

You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop – the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents – that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative – wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry – stick Band-­aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face­lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-­or-­treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.

But past the age of forty you need all the help you can get. Now is the time for designers and, believe me, Rei Kawakubo has made it possible for older people to be as fashion daring as the young. “Too rich? Too nuts?” Yesiree, these are Rei’s customers, and we are proud to be her cult members on “Planet Rei.”

• I just so happened to wander into a gallery last weekend and stumble on the work of Sara Hamedi. She made a piece about consumption and desire and emptiness that I wish I could share. But for now, this one about romantic love is on youtube:

• This feels like old timey stumbleupon-tumblr-era internet fun: if you want to turn your name (or any word) into an abstract synesthetic shape, like the artist Guy Rombouts does… you can.

  

  That’s “Articles Of Interest” in Azart

• For the Barbie® girlies and kens: if you listened to this AOI episode about the dolls that saved French Fashion… you’ll know where this 1985 fashion doll show got the idea….

Okay. Thanks for listening/ reading.

Let me know if you have any ideas for when and where I could wear my paper dress. Other than in a hospital.

Yours,

Avery