Functional Fashion?

These are incredible designs, and even more so, in some sense, because they've been designed to meet a perceived urban threat. Interesting to think about the city, The Roaring Girl (itself a city comedy), navigating densely populated steel canyons, people shape-shifting into street furniture at the mere unfolding of a skirt... Metropolis is a city film. Interested to see what connections we will make between 1602 and 1927, London and German techno-dystopia. --jz


Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place

Urban CamouflageSlide Show

TOKYO, Oct. 19 — On a narrow Tokyo street, near a beef bowl restaurant and a pachinko parlor, Aya Tsukioka demonstrated new clothing designs that she hopes will ease Japan’s growing fears of crime.

Deftly, Ms. Tsukioka, a 29-year-old experimental fashion designer, lifted a flap on her skirt to reveal a large sheet of cloth printed in bright red with a soft drink logo partly visible. By holding the sheet open and stepping to the side of the road, she showed how a woman walking alone could elude pursuers — by disguising herself as a vending machine...

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Submitted by julia zay on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 12:09pm. julia zay's blog | login or register to post comments | printer friendly version