"Designers, this is your fabric! Newspaper! Paper clothing, the first paper dress was created in 1968! and that was 40years ago!! There’s wide range of paper clothing back then. From paper Dress to paper pants! (Oh don't you dare to wet your pants!) Even paper slippers!"
Tim Gunn
How paper clothing came about? Scott Paper Company used the paper dress to promote their toilet paper and paper tissues. In exchange of $1.25, happy housewives would be mailed a paisley or op-art 'Paper Caper' dress and some coupons to buy napkins and toilet rolls.Demand exceeded the 500,000 garments produced and other manufacturers soon followed with designs to promote their own goods.
Promotional paper dress of Universal Studios with portraits of its stars, USA 1968
In pure '60s Pop culture, you could find one-off paper dresses adorned with portraits of the Presidential candidates and flower-power paper bikinis. Disposable clothing had a very futuristic, 'space age' appeal. As one textile designer stated for Life Magazine, "Who is going to do laundry in space?"
Far from being one-offs to be thrown away, a number of these paper garments can be worn several times thanks to the use of sturdier paper materials such as tyvek, a synthetic paper material.
Every now and then, there are still reappearance for paper clothings.
Hussein Chalayan, Airmail Dress, 1999. Tyvek dress.
This time on Project Runway season 6. They're throwing off a fabric challenge, Newspaper. It is tough to turn paper functions the same as a cloth that is soft and flexible. Something that is solidified like paper, to make a dress out of it requires much understanding on the material itself and the availability type of construction.
In the end, all the designers came out with their own masterpiece. Good or Bad, judge it for yourself.
Think of it, are you able to construct an 'eye soothing' paper clothing?
(I know it's not architecture-buildings related, but it involves art and creativity. It also triggers your construction mind on how to deal with papers [I think?])
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