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DeviantART member viria13 put modern fashions on Disney princesses (and Anastasia, too). The artwork is lovely, but can someone tell me who “Kida” is? Link -via The Daily What
If you love race cars, then you might just like these fantastic Prada pumps based on the some of the most popular cars of the 50′s and 60′s. It’s a great blend between classic and modern styles.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Chilean artist Fabian Ciraolo thought it would be fun to show what 80s cartoon characters looked like when dressed up in fancy retro clothes. Is it just me or do the hipsterific outfits and pouty faces of the models make most of the pictures look like pages from an Urban Outfitters catalog set in a cartoon world?
This strangely elegant looking dress was fashioned from 700 condoms by Vietnamese graphic design student Nguyen Minh Tuan, in honor of World AIDS Awareness Day.
These condoms may no longer be useful for preventing STDs or pregnancy, but the fact that they glow in the dark means you’ll still be the center of attention even after the lights go out.
When the Apple company was just beginning to take the home computing world by storm, they apparently thought it would be a good idea to try their hand at designing clothing as well.
These clothes are the ultimate in computing comfort, and nothing says 1986 like wrapping sweaters around yourself in strange places.
It’s one thing to turn some delicate piece of paper into a small papercraft, but to make something as detailed and elaborate as a Victorian dress is a completely different matter entirely. Artist Susan Stockwell has been creating such incredible designs as the one above for over ten years.
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Illustrator Claire Hummel has taken a look at the Disney princesses with a historical eye, from Snow White’s 16th-century Germany setting to Belle’s late 18th century French environment. She found that the clothes they wore didn’t match up to the historical settings very well and decided to set things straight. Here’s what Claire had to say about her interpretation of Jasmine from Aladdin (above):
“Let’s be frank — Aladdin is hardly an exercise in historical accuracy… It took some effort to track down some midriff-baring outfits but BY GEORGE I DID, thank you Persian fashion plates. I now know what sirwal are called (besides Hammer pants), and that Persian women wore some pretty sweet little jackets that I wish I owned.”
You can read about the rest of her findings over at Flavorwire. Prints are available on Claire’s site – wouldn’t they be a lovely addition to the room of a princess-obsessed little girl?
Link via Flavorwire
Dave Forbes created this 60″ LED tv coat that’s powered by a 12V battery. Unsurprisingly, he designed it specifically for use at the Burning Man festival.
Personally, I’d rather carry around a tablet or laptop so I could watch television myself, but I guess I’m just greedy like that.
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Designer Kunihiko Morinaga is taking the resolution down a notch or two, all the way down to the pixel level. In his collection called Low (low resolution, that is), you’ll find dresses, jackets, sportswear, hosiery, shoes, and accessories all rendered in what appears to be 8-bit patterns. Where would you wear these pixelated pumps? See lots more pictures at Gamma Squad. Link
This article caught my eye because only a couple of days ago I explained to my daughter why pajamas were invented: because once upon a time we wanted to keep our expensive daytime clothing clean and wrinkle-free because it was difficult and destructive to clean them. An essay at Etsy explains more about the way clothing used to be. In 1900, a new dress could cost a couple month’s wages. Thanks to overseas labor, modern machinery, and synthetic fabrics, it only takes abut an hour to earn the price of a discount store dress.
As clothes have become cheaper, our clothing consumption has gone through the roof. In 1930, the average American woman owned an average of nine outfits. Today, we each buy more than 60 pieces of new clothing on average per year. Our closets are larger and more stuffed than ever, as we’ve traded quality and style for low prices and trend-chasing. In the face of these irresistible deals, our total spending on clothing has actually increased, from $7.82 billion spent on apparel in 1950 to $375 billion today. And the discounters are reaping the rewards.
Sixty pieces of new clothing a year? Really? Even my growing children don’t buy that much! Link -via Boing Boing
If you like to wear your heart on your sleeve, but your heart just happens to rock a set of taped up glasses and a bow tie, then these fashion pieces are guaranteed to compliment your geekiest sensitivities. I’m sure you’ll notice that most of these are for women, but as I’m sure you know, that’s just because fashion is focused around females.
The idea of this Etch-A-Sketch skirt by Etsy user SewOeno is pretty cool, but what really puts it over the top is the use of embroidery to create a picture that looks perfect for the subject in question.
That same Etsy seller, SewOeno was also responsible for this exceptionally popular Game Boy dress.
For those who like old school Nintendo over Game Boys, you’re sure to love this awesome Nintendo controller dress by Liz Tan.
This knitted sweater vest by Happy Seamstress is an accurate replica of a screenshot of the original Mario Bros game.
more …
Did people actually wear collars like this, or was it a special accessory to wear while sitting for a portrait? Minnesotastan got curious and researched Elizabethan ruffs. They served a purpose: keeping “ring around the collar” away from the shirt. In the 17th century, the upper classes even had special appliances to iron them. The ruffs were starched, dyed, and propped up before they fell out of fashion. Get the whole story and additional links at TYWKIWDBI. Link
A study of lice genes is helping scientists to pinpoint the era in history when humans began to wear clothing. Really.
The key to the study by David Reed and colleagues, which appears in Molecular Biology And Evolution, is that there are two kinds of lice that hang around humans: the head lice that live on our scalp, and the body lice that live in our clothes. At one point in the past these two shared a common ancestor, Reed reasoned, and the body lice would have split off and become a separate group once they had human clothing in which to live.
The genomes of the two kinds of lice split somewhere between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago, which means that humans ran naked for hundreds of thousands of years without body hair or clothing. Clothing probably arose during an Ice Age, and eventually enabled humans to leave Africa to explore colder parts of the world. Link
This Italian photo site documents the fashions of the 1960s and ’70s -miniskirts, bellbottoms, platform shoes, hot pants, go-go boots, and that hair! You’ll see some famous faces among the models. Elements of these styles come back every once in a while, but the total look of those days of fashion will never be duplicated. Link -via Metafilter
Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of wacky inventions in his weekly Museum of Possibilities posts, but something’s missing from his strange gadgets: names. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenter suggesting the funniest and wittiest name will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop!
Contest rules: one entry per comment, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please make a selection of the T-shirt you want (may we suggest the Science T-shirt, Funny T-shirt, and Artist-designed T-shirt categories?) alongside your entry. If you don’t select a shirt, then you forfeit the prize. Good luck!
Update: Congratulations to first prize winner Jacob Holcomb, who named it Right Side Up, and second place winner Guldaur, who named it Awrygarb. Both win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! We also have some entries deserving of honorable mention: Amanderpanderer parallelopants, Scarab Tilt-A-World Officewear by Management Vision, Scarab Sidewinder Suit, BrianD Slantaloons, BrianD The right pants!, reba buhr the elongoutfit, Trevor The Turncoat, and Trevor again for Whirrdrobe
The Tumblr blog Muslims Wearing Things was launched as a reaction to former NPR analyst Juan Willams saying he gets nervous when he sees people in Muslim garb on planes. Looking through the pictures of the things Muslims wear, I was reminded of a neat bit of casting I knew about but had forgotten.
Prince Abdullah (now King Abdullah II) of Jordan, wearing a Starfleet uniform in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
Then there’s reality.
US Army Specialist and Muslim Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan wore camouflage, up until the day he was killed in combat in Iraq, fighting for his country.
Link -via Metafilter
The Estonian start-up company Fits.me has designed a mannequin that can alter its shape so that it can try on clothes for you. The design is being marketed to online clothing retailers because they can’t offer customers the opportunity to try on clothes personally:
All told, the robot is capable of replicating 2,000 body shapes. When a retailer signs up with Fits.me, they first send in their clothes. Each size is placed on the robot, which then cycles through all the body shapes it knows. (Think of the scene at the end of Terminator 2, when the T-1000 is being melted down.) While that’s going on, a camera is taking pictures of each permutation. This photographic log is then stored in an online database. Once you go online and type your measurements into the retailer’s site, it calls up the photo corresponding to your precise body type and clothing size.
Link via Popular Science | Photo: Fits.me
You know what they say -when you find a look that works, stick with it. However, if you look back far enough, you’ll see that he’s tried other styles as well. Link -via J-Walk Blog
It has always been my habit to give an idea – any idea – a fighting chance to percolate in my mind for a while, letting it have full reign to explore its own possibilities. The flip side of this liberal and undisciplined attitude towards my own ideas is that they may seem irresistible and attractive even after their flaws are already apparent. Take my idea for Inflatable Swimwear. Was it really an idea worth elaborating, wasting my time on? The disadvantages of inflatable swimwear were immediately obvious! It is not only the opposite of sleek looking, but it presents an obstacle, even when not inflated, to rapid and efficient swimming.
Yet it seems I did not know when to stop once I got this idea. Wishing to improve on it, I worried about the way an inflated top of a two-piece swimsuit would likely ride up around the neck while swimming, possibly exposing the breasts. I addressed that flaw by creating a full body inflatable suit, as shown in yellow.
Thinking further, I wondered how such a suit might be inflated quickly and easily, given that blowing it up by mouth – as anyone who has blown up an air mattress by mouth on a camping trip can attest – is tiring and takes seemingly forever. Here, I adapted several items, commonly worn at the beach or swimming pool, as air pumps.
Naturally, an inflatable swimsuit would be cause for snickering and derisive laughter. Yet if a life were saved, who would be laughing then?
The style choices for a man’s inflatable swimsuit would, according to present standards of allowable public nudity, allow for two options. The suit could either be worn as trunks or as a single-piece, full body suit, similar in appearance to the modest style favored by male and female swimmers during the Victorian era.
More study is needed. If the inflatable chambers were placed mostly on the front side of the suit, such a design would tend to pull the swimmer over onto his or her back, which might make it difficult to swim, or to keep the head raised. Thinking more broadly, if getting an all-day sunburn – a burn on the front side of the body only – is desired, it would be easy to create a swimsuit that includes an inflatable raft on the back side that also supports the head. It could even include a hole for holding drinks. Excuse me, while I head to the drafting table to work on it!
If you’re a complete Capri Sun fiend and just hate wasting all those left over packets, this jacket design might be just what you needed. It only takes 140 pouches.
When Bailey the retriever went to the veterinary clinic in Corfe Mullen, Dorset, England, the doctor thought he had a tumor. What veterinarian Keith Moore found inside the dog was five golf gloves, ten socks, one stocking, and part of a towel!
“Vets obviously do a fair number of foreign object removals but I doubt I will ever see anything like this again in my career.
“Even for us, from a vet’s point of view, it was pretty amazing.
“It was like doing a magic trick. We were just pulling out one sock after another,” he joked.
Moore believes Bailey must have been eating laundry for years to accumulate such a mass. The dog has fully recovered from surgery and acts like a puppy again. Link -via Arbroath
Expo TV has a video interview with Lee Eisman, the Director of the
Pantone Color Institute. In the video, Eisman discusses how Pantone
chooses its colors and predicts color trends.
You may or may
not be surprised by the amount of research that goes into selecting new
colors and keeping existing colors fresh – factors ranging from
economic conditions, world affairs, clothing featured in the
entertainment industry, home décor trends and art trends play into the
decision making process.
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by 
