Howdy!

Part One is here, Part Two is here.

Dress the Part by Isabelle Bérubé

Now those are some shoulder pads I can really get into… Or if you would prefer less colloquial phrasing, I get a big kick out of this dress as well. Although I’m not certain I would ever be invited someplace where it would be formal enough to wear. And while I would venture a guess that most of the pieces that were used to make it came from sports cars, it is not a “sporty” outfit in the least.

Ms. Bérubé appears to have turned this concept of transforming old car parts (or more precisely old car seats) into fashion accessories fulltime. Although I think she should exhibit her work at the auto show.

I can’t imagine that a car tire as a corset or belt would be all that comfortable, however choosing it was an inspired choice. Clearly marking the difference between bottom and top, while at the same time hitting you upside the face with where the materials used to make the dress came from. Without the tire, it would be like some sort of overwrought futuristic ball gown suitable for the cover of a Harlequin Romance about a 22nd century debutante.

Although now that I have gone to the Harlequin Romance website, I have discovered that in fact they do not publish any science fiction, but that they do have a series called Harlequin NASCAR (The rush of the race car circuit; the thrill of falling in love®.) So maybe I should change the lines above to read something like “with the tire it is perfect as the ballgown of Dr. Nicole Foster, the heroine of Running Wide Open.

Naw, not even close.

And I’m also not certain what to make of the wires…

Surprisingly, this dress is badly translated. In French it is called “Ordonnance Royale” a pun on the multiple definitions of the word ordonnance. A) a prescription and B) a law. Since it is made up of melted down plastic pill containers and made to look like a ballgown. I think I would have called it something like Royal Script, playing off the multiple definitions of the word script, ne of which is “prescription.” But nobody asked me.

And while it does look like it would be suitable for a princess, I would hate to ask Kate Middleton to have to wear it. As I don’t think melted plastic is the most malleable of materials and according to the tag beside the dress, it weighs in at a little more than 200 pounds.

I’m not sure what to make of this one. Despite using Styrofoam from packaging for the socks and the collar it is mainly made out of what they call a “vacuum bag” but is actually a Madvac Collector Bag. You know one of those little four wheeled buggies with a vacuum tube that looks like an elephant’s trunk that sucks up the garbage from the sidewalk? Well, the bag that is used to collect the trash was used to make this dress.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are signed objects from Quebecois vedettes displayed alongside the dresses. Some have obvious connections, some less so. This is one of the more obvious connections. While Margie Gillis has cut her hair (for a very long time she didn’t) this bird’s next comes from the period when she wasn’t cutting it. At the Biosphere they have a very nice story explaining how it came to be.

The reason it is an obvious connection is that the nest is displayed next to this dress.

It can’t be that comfortable to wear even if they attached the hair to a nylon hairstyling cape, I also would love to know how the hair was attached, colored and how much hairspray was used to keep the hair in place. And while it looks really cool, I’m not entirely convinced that hair counts ass garbage.

It also can serve as an example of how unreligious Quebecois culture has become. As recently as fifty years ago, a hairdress would have been worn by someone feeling particularly guilty about some thing (or things). But this exhibit makes no mention or reference in any way shape or form to the religious nature of wearing hair. Which is apparently still done by Carmelites.

Another impractical dress, especially since it is lit from within. You can see it in full here. I do not know, but I would imagine that this dress was possibly responsible for the Dramatic Lighting! (with the capital “D,” capital “L” and an exclamation mark) and as with the hairdress, I’m not convinced that books qualify as garbage material.

That all being said, an upskirt shot of Chapter Ten is a very abstract thing.

Still more tomorrow.