Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Dressing for recession?


I'm bemused by a fashion designer's response to the economic crisis.

Liz Hurley and her safety pin dress are so last decade. According to this misguided designer the zip is king - and forget fabric, all you need is 120 of the metal fastenings for a show-stopping outfit.

Described as the ultimate in credit crunch chic by designer Sebastian Errazuriz - The Zipper - is a dress that can be worn not one, two, or even three ways, this little number can be fashioned into over a hundred styles.

The outlandish design is made up of 120 separate zips that can be added, removed or partially undone to create endless clothing possibilities. It can be adapted to create anything from a belt or T-shirt to a full-length evening dress.

Fancy revealing a bit more cleavage? The neckline can be easily adjusted; how about showing off your legs? Just a few changes and the dress skims the thigh; and if you really want to show off your figure the outfit can even become a two-piece mini skirt and crop-top by removing zips from the middle of the outfit.

Possibilities are increased further by partially unzipping parts of the dress to reveal bare skin or coloured clothing worn underneath.

The 31-year-old designer hopes his ground-breaking black and silver design will start a fashion trend.

He said: 'The dress was influenced by the constant changes and demands that fashion establishes every season.

'The idea was to create a single dress that could easily be reconstructed over and over again to comply with hundreds of variations.

'I believe the concept is particularly poignant in the current economic crisis because you can buy one dress and get a hundred different fashion possibilities.'

The first dress was handmade and took about two months to make from conception to final product. Mr Errazuriz is currently in talks with developers about putting the dress into mass production so it can be sold at a reasonable price.


I can see how versatility in a garment can be a good thing . . . but there's a catch.

Folks, how many of you have had the unpleasant experience of catching an essential item of anatomy in a zipper? Both males and females have the odd 'protrusion' here and there, and I'm here to tell you, it's painful!

With no less than 120 zips to catch things in . . . could this be the Dress From Hell, created by the Antichrist to bring on the pain and suffering of the Apocalypse?



Peter

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

On the other hand, once you get it off her, she's staying the weekend!

:)

Anonymous said...

My natural reaction to the picture earned me a slap from She Who Must Be Obeyed.... sigh..... other than that, speaking as a red-blooded male chauvinist of the first order, I do hope this dress catches on :-)

Michael W. said...

Peter,

The only problem with the dress is like the stuff in a Victoria's Secret catalog the models just don't come with the clothing. Many's the time I have seen such clothing on real people and it don't look a THING like it does in the catalog......

I'm just sayin'
-GRIN-

On a Wing and a Whim said...

Wait, you wanted her to decide what to wear and be ready to go in how short a time?

Not to mention, if a zipper should catch upon a corner or snag upon a seat back, it'd lead to a wardrobe malfunction!

That said, having once known a dress with a spiraling zipper (so that the object of one's desire could be peeled out of it rather akin to peeling an orange), I would sincerely like to have this dress, and have somewhere to wear it.

Strings said...

I could see this being fun. However, if Spoon we wearing it for a night out, I'd probably spend most of the night keeping an eye on the zipper-pulls: tell me some lout in a bar wouldn't try unzipping some!