The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice on the disturbing origins of raven-nosed masks, which were worn by so-called “plague doctors” during times of mass death in Early Modern Europe: The earliest textual description of the…
Clothing
Cop t-shirts: For when merely acting like an abusive asshole doesn’t send a strong enough message. Via the Huffington Post, Radley Balko runs down a litany of disturbing examples of custom t-shirts…
I suppose the idea is that we are born sinners. The Telegraph reports: A Saudi cleric’s declaration that babies should wear burkas to protect them from sexual attacks has drawn widespread criticism. Sheikh…
Stock up for the future? Artist Adam Harvey, previously noted for his CV Dazzle project revealing how to style hair and makeup to avoid detection by facial recognition software, has developed a Stealth…
Via Quora, how, with a couple dollars and a few spare minutes, to make yourself invisible to Big Brother: Most cameras (especially black and white security cameras) will see low levels of…
Has the “Pussy Riot ski mask” supplanted the Trayvon hoodie as the political protest fashion piece of the moment? Somehow I’m unable to envision NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg doing this. Reports the Iceland Review:
Reykjavík Mayor Jón Gnarr dressed as members of the Russian girl punk band Pussy Riot, who are currently on trial in Moscow for public protest, in this year’s Gay Pride parade. A banner with the words “Free Pussy Riot” hung from his float.
The Gay Pride parade is considered by many to be an opportunity for the general public and visitors to both show solidarity with the gay community and come together in celebration and support of human rights for all.
Looking for an easy way to make people treat you differently? Via Vice, Annette Lamothe-Ramos conducts a social experiment by wearing Saudi-style burqa in New York City for a day: I figured…
The ONLY person to beat Barack Obama in an election. Reports Peter Grier in Christian Science Monitor:
Hoodies on the House floor are verboten, apparently. Rep. Bobby Rush (D) of Illinois was scolded and escorted from the chamber of the House of Representatives on Wednesday morning, when he attempted to give a speech on the need for a full investigation of the Trayvon Martin shooting while wearing sunglasses and a gray hooded sweat shirt. “Racial profiling has to stop, Mr. Speaker,” said Representative Rush while doffing his suit jacket to reveal his hoodie garb. “Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”
Occupy Melbourne protesters pull a pleasing prank on local police — in their city, it’s illegal to camp in parks, so they realized that turning tents into clothing would make the perfect cop-baiting outfits:
Someday the lifeless bodies of all of us may be laid into the cold earth zipped snugly in the outfit at right. Artist Jae Rhim Lee designed her mushroom burial suit to address how…
With temperatures rising the last thing you’d want to do is put on a jacket, but Japan’s ‘air-conditioned’ coats have built-in fans to keep you cool. Via France24:
As jackets go it looks far from fashionable, but its Japanese maker cannot meet sky-rocketing demand for “air conditioned” coats with built-in fans.
Kuchofuku Co. Ltd — whose name literally means “air-conditioned clothing” — has seen orders soar amid power shortages in Japan after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
As parts of the nation sweat out an uncomfortable summer shackled by restrictions on electricity use, demand has grown for goods that provide guilt-free respite from the unrelenting summer heat.
Two electric fans in the jacket can be controlled to draw air in at different speeds, giving the garment a puffed-up look. But this has not deterred those happy to be cool rather than “hot” when it comes to fashion.
As androids/dolls/CG figures become more lifelike, flesh-and-blood humans may desire to head in the other direction. Girls (and boys) can now pick up chic joint stockings to give themselves the look of…
Wikileaks unveils an incredibly infuriating revelation, via the Nation. To sum up: desperately poor Haiti planned to raise its minimum wage from 24 cents per hour to 62 cents, angering the contractors for U.S. corporations such as Levis and Hanes, who pay slave wages to Haitians who sew our clothes. The Obama administration intervened on behalf of those companies, and bullied the Haitian government into setting the mark at 32 cents.
To put things in perspective, upping the hourly wage to 62 cents would have cost Hanes an additional $1.6 million each year. Hanesbrands turned $211 million in profit last year and CEO Richard Noll personally was paid $10 million.
In another experiment, volunteers watched one of two videos of the same man being interviewed for a job. In one, his shirt had a logo; in the other, it did not. The…
No, it’s not an immutable law of nature. In the 1920s, retailers began encouraging pink (a strong color) for boys and blue (a dainty one) for girls, before the trend reversed after…
A video in which fashion designers circa the 1930s were asked to design clothing as they predicted it would look in the year 2000. More fun than accurate (“transparent nets to catch males”, “an electric belt will adapt the belt to climatic changes”, “a dress of aluminum”), although their vision of the tie-less, goateed 21st century male — with his portable phone/radio and pockets for “keys, coins, and candy for cuties” — is fairly prescient.
Looking for that perfect dress that will turn heads? Well, this one is made with pollutant-absorbing concrete, so you can clean the air too! Discovery News reports: A collaboration between London College…