Plastic outfits: Transparent items that should be discarded
The main paradox of the fashion industry for 2018 is: Designers politely refuse natural fur (just the day before, Furla and Versace announced this) and at the same time they began to use one of the most polluting materials - plastic. There is a contradiction, but it seems that even fashionable media is not against it. We tell how it happened.
How it all began
In the past weeks of the fashion of the season-2018, the tendency for plastic has finally become established: bright raincoats, plastic dresses and skirts, plastic bags and even “packaging” for shoes are now in high esteem. These artificial materials showed everything: lovers of luxury and brilliance Balmain, feminine Toga, conservative Lanvin, advanced Off-White and many others.
Today, the choice of plastic as a material for clothing looks strange, however, it was not today to do so. Polyethylene things at the junction of fashion and art appeared almost a hundred years ago: so, the collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim, even in the 30s, appeared in a plastic dress of her friend, designer Elsa Schiaparelli - this outfit even now looks innovative. Its translucent Cape with a large hood is also known - it is almost no different from modern models; according to legend, one of the works of this kind of Schiaparelli melted immediately after the first cleaning. But this did not stop the next generation of designers - they predicted that it would be plastic that would be the main help in the realization of their most risky ideas.
Paco Rabanne, for example, stated that he was inspired by the atmosphere of the 60s — the struggle for women's rights and freedom — which is why the dresses in his debut collection resemble armor. The futuristic outfits of the brand of the same name consisted of plastic, rubber and cardboard plates interlaced with chains, and looked like costumes for guests from another planet. Later, the designer really sewed a Barbarala costume for the sci-fi heroine: a plastic jacket-body and a translucent top. Fantasy "dresses of the future" were created by another fashion visionary Andre Kurezh, also using waterproof material: his outfits were thought up as if for the alternative 60s, where people already live on the Moon and fly on space ships.
Since then, plastic has always been associated with a high-tech future. In a Nokia 2000 ad, for example, the phone lay in the back pocket of transparent trousers - the latter should have emphasized the approach of the high-tech era, which marks the new gadget. In filmmaking, plastic often hints at artificiality: for example, in the first part of Blade Runner, a transparent slicker wore a replicant, the heroine Joanna Cassidy, and in a recent sequel, a projection of a girl named Joy, played by Ana de Armas. In the series “Modified Carbon”, the bodies are stored in transparent bags, and in one of the episodes of the “Black Mirror” the reviving doll is packed in a vacuum wrapper.
Why plastic is coming back
It would seem that we live in a distant future from the 30s and even 60s, but plastic today is still perceived as futuristic material. He did not replace any fabric - except for the rainwear suits better than others. Some scientists are trying to fix it: according to research, plastic has a cooling effect, which will be especially important in the era of global warming. It is possible that some day they will create thick suits that protect against various injuries - for example, cuts and bruises - which is possible now. Nevertheless, despite this, it’s impossible to call it the material of the future.
The level of pollution of the planet with plastic is enormous: according to forecasts, by 2050 there will be more of it in the oceans than fish. Every year tens of billions of plastic particles are found in rivers and seas. Designers who are increasingly experimenting with problematic material seem to ignore it - no matter consciously or not.
2017 can surely be called the year of street fashion. It is street brands that are known for using high-tech (or masquerading) materials, and this time the conservative brands decided to borrow the approach - hence all these "packed" shoes and transparent inserts. The biggest question is what to do with the micro-trend on plastic bags: they were shown by Balenciaga, Burberry and Céline. Laugh at the ironic lunge in the era of metamodernism will not last long, because the real price of such things is high. However, it is terrible to imagine what will begin in the summer, when the mass market will try to repeat iconic things on an unprecedented scale.
In the meantime, things from plastic continue to fall into the lists of the season's "Mastkhevs." After the 2017 fall show, Calvin Klein launched another bomb on the Internet: everyone was discussing a yellow fur coat, literally packaged in transparent material. Even the adherents of the classics eventually adapt the futuristic material for themselves: an example of this is the Valentino dress from the spring-summer 2016 collection.
Why is it important to say no plastic
It can be difficult to deny yourself the purchase of the most current moment of a thing: for example, a bright raincoat, painted bags with the logo of your favorite brand, and even plastic wallets. Even harder to stop using toxic materials when they are just everywhere. However, it is worth making an effort not to drown in the ocean of garbage in the future. So far, unfortunately, plastic has not begun to be efficiently processed on an industrial scale - for example, into the same clothes. So if he does not take root in fashion, there will be less reasons to produce non-decomposable material - and this is already a great victory for the environment. So far, the forecasts are disappointing.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Jil Sander, Back, Totokaelo, Simmi
