Environmentally Conscious Couture

I'd like to take a trip back to some of the older, more fun designs that I've made. These two that I've found are from my Junior and Senior year of high school. I went to an all-girls school, and our mixers and formals were usually a whole lotta girls and an unfortunate handfull of boys. Without a date, I tried to create the most off-the-wall dresses for kicks and giggles for formal. I was pretty broke, so "off-the-wall" is just a translation for "whatever I could find in the janitor's closet." No joke.

My Junior year, I was boarding the plane to get back to school from visiting my Aunt Anne for the break. Anne is always very particular about fashion, clothes generally have to be set within a certain norm. I had mentioned sometime my sophomore year that I'd probably do a duct tape gown for formal and I think I gave the woman a heart attack. So of course, I plan to wait until I'm boarding the plane to figure out a dress arrangement because I'm sure as hell not going shopping. "I need a dress for formal" "....I guess you're S.O.L. then? Have a good time at school! Bye!"

So I return to school convinced that I do want to go to this formal, but no dress to wear. The night before, I decide that trash bags will be my best option for something funky. Cheap, disposable, and I could tape the durn thing on me. So I scrambled through my closet, found a long piece of sturdy ribbon to tie around my waste. I took about fifteen giant, black, industrial sized trash bags, opened them up to let some poof into them, and stapled them around the ribbon. I then took two other bags, cut the sides and opened them up, and duct taped it into a strapless, form fitting, top. Well dressed as a bag lady for the evening, I grabbed my stunningly good looking date, Nicki, and headed to the dance.



Over the next year, I had recieved so many compliemnts about the dress, that I decided to make another dress of some kind. This year, I grabbed an old newspaper and tried to design away to make newsprint look relatively fashionable. I took a long piece of ribbon (the same one I used for the last dress, staples still in) and measured it to my waist. I then took newsprint longways and pleated it to make it a little easier to move in. I then stapled it to the ribbon. Since paper isn't quite as flexible as garbage bags, the top was a little more difficult. I managed to measure out some form of a paper corset that was strapless and extended below the ribbon to hide the edges of the skirt. I made it to measure hips, waist, and bust with a split at each side. I pressed it againt my back and stomach as a friend duct taped up the sides to keep me in it. The movement around the underarms and bust was a tad uncomfortable, so I cut a small slit in the top, folded over corners, and taped the edges down to give it a scalloped effect. Same as last year, dressed to impress any environmentalist, I grabbed Nicki and headed to the mixer. It was surprisingly easy to move in, but didn't last long, since I had plans to go see The Mantras rock out at the Blind Tiger that evening. In hindsight, I should have just kept it on and danced around all night covered in the classified ads.



A couple weeks ago, I headed to Amberland, the Perpetual Groove music festival. I had an absolute blast with all of my festival family for the weekend. There were two themed nights, Jersey Shores and Anything but Clothes. I decided for the first time in a while that I wouldn't dress up. I have a nice collectrion so far of handmade costumes for festivals but I thought I'd take a break.
On ABC night, my good friend from Atlanta, Molly Blair, ran up to my camp covered in what looked and sounded like a giant tinsel nightmare. She stopped, did a quick model pose and said, "it's a future toga!" My friend Megan and I were not dressed for the evening but did admire the well fashioned Mylar blanket wrapped around her. She then surprised us with two pocket sized Mylar sheets to fashion to our fancy for the evening. Molly's dress was actually fashionend together by Tahnee Bassett, a local Athens designer who had a booth set up at the festival. I heard that she's designing Molly's wedding gown as well as a gown for Conley Narozniak, the fiancee' of the bassist for PGroove. Way cool. We handed her the blankets, a giant roll of duct tape and she went right to work. I admired her technique- she seemed to kind of look at the blanket, look at us, and then throw it on us perfectly. That's some major skills if you can make a Mylar blanket look fashionable.



Needless to say, we were totally stylin' for the evening. It was nice that Megan and I couldn't lose each other because you could hear our dresses so loudly as we walked. After the late night set, we stumbled upon a bachelor party, who dubbed us the "baked potato girls" becuase we looked like giant, wrapped baked potatoes going through the crowd. Future togas were definitely a prime memory in my excellent adventures at Amberland.