tupperWEAR
Many a season of Project Runway has come and gone, and while Season 6 is generally considered a snoozefest, what winner Irina Shabayeva has been doing since winning the reality show and launching her line is eye-popping and possibly the most innovative of any Runway alumni.
Shabayeva’s latest collection premiered at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York on Saturday February 13; built around a theme of aviation, it featured feathers, hand-painted detailing, wool, leather, fur, and… well, yes, if you looked at the terrible pun titling this article, Tupperware.
Shabayeva has an incredible talent for mixing the feel of soft femininity with a sartorial confidence of the detailing in each piece, and her emphasis on the essential luxe that imbues her work makes even the materials that make up the plastic container holding last night’s leftovers classy, chic and stylish. It’s because of every other news report that one can even realize that it is not just fabric and feathers that Shabayeva uses to create her art, and the seamless integration is really inspirational–what else can we do with unconventional materials in clothing?
Think about it–a plastic dress, while not exactly biodegradable, is sort of like a redesigned plastic bag. It can be worn for years, and if you gain a few pounds, the gown can stretch with you (just not back the other way!). You find and buy a snazzy looking one, and it’ll be in style forever–you can pass it off to your daughter, who’ll give it to her daughter, who’ll… for the next 500-1,000 years, or however long a plastic bag will take to disintegrate. Scientists haven’t figured it out yet.
What’s your take on plastic-wear? Does this bring back too many memories of technicolored vinyl pants that left too little to the imagination, or are you psyched to cut up some old lunch boxes right now and start assembling your own DIY-plastic-detailed-dresses? Are you gonna take other cues from Irina Shabayeva, and try incorporating some animal exteriors into your clothing?
(I recommend pulling the feathers out of your pillowcase if you can’t find any foot-long behemoths on your local carrion, and with the overabundance of obese squirrels on campus, you’re living in a city-wide fur factory).
