Fashion at the fringes?

Two fashion reports have me scratching my head in some bewilderment.

The first is from designer Charlie le Mindu, who recently held a fashion show described as ‘on the fringes of London’s Fashion Week’. It certainly was, judging by the photographs of the models on his blog! I’m not going to post most of them, as semi-naked ladies parading in their underwear would overheat my male readers lower the tone of this blog. (Ahem.)

However, one of his ‘designs’ made me do a double-take. It’s a head-dress of mouse and rat carcasses! Click the picture for a larger view.

Please note, those aren’t just the skins, but the actual flattened carcasses of the creatures! Who on earth would want to wear something like that? – apart from a model who’s being paid to do so, that is, and I suspect even she would have qualms!

The second report is from a New Orleans newspaper, reporting on a fashion show in China which featured dresses and other feminine apparel made entirely out of condoms. Click the pictures for a larger view.

Sure, you could go to a trendy fashion show in New York in the hopes of seeing Naomi Campbell hurl a cellphone at the crowd, but once you’ve been to Beijing’s annual condom catwalk extravaganza, fashion shows that refrain from making their garments from birth control staples just seem downright dull.

In Beijing, amidst extravagant soap bubble special effects models showed off wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, zany bikinis and other apparel made entirely of condoms, inflated or otherwise.

The show took place at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and sponsored by China’s largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

It also marked World Population Day, organized annually by the U.N. Population Fund. China, with a population of 1.3 billion, implemented a strict one-child policy in the late 1970s under which many residents are limited to one child.

Xu Xuejun, spokesman with the State Population and Family Planning Commission reiterated that China would not relax its population control policy in the future. But the fashion show’s main goal was to promote AIDS awareness. A lack of sex education and hesitancy to talk openly about sex still hampers the fight, health experts say.

Well, if that sort of thing doesn’t help to promote open conversation, I don’t know what will!

Peter