Forget face masks, they're so 2020
Just when you thought you'd seen it all, condom gloves have stolen the show at Paris Fashion Week.
Well, maybe not stolen the show, but they've certainly made a splash and a few headlines.
Models strutted down the runway on Wednesday for aquatic brand Botter with the prophylactic incasing their hands. And they were full of water.
Yes, the condoms were worn as water-filled gloves. As
Vogue put it, they were prophylactic aquariums.
The aim was to bring "water to the runway", according to designer Rushemy Botter, who made them along with Lisi Herrebrugh.
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“Our thinking was, how can we collaborate with nature and not with another fashion brand? This is something that we’ve tried to research deeper and deeper every season,” Botter said.
There were “a lot of trials” to make the gloves,
France 24 reports. The gloves are meant to showcase the models’ hands swimming to raise awareness about the oceans.
“It’s almost bizarre, romantic, mermaid vibes,” Botter said.
Botter and Herrebrugh also featured designs with material made from kelp, which they used for a pair of tube dresses.
“It’s a starting point of how we can incorporate new material into the collection,” Herrebrugh told Vogue, hinting that we might see more kelp-like material in the Fall 2023 collection.
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The designers also sent a bag made entirely of ice down the runway - surely, more of a winter accessory given the warming climate, tho great to chip away at during a summer cocktail party.
People thought it was very cool.
While the condom gloves stole the headlines, fashion fans, praised the brand for the innovations, as well at their colour scheme: "The palette, the silhouette… divine," one fan wrote.
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"The colour palette is perfect," added a second, while a third simply wrote:
"Omg this is so cool."
However, the clothes weren't the other things commenters wanted to talk about. One Asked: "Are the condoms single use? If so it would kind of ruin the whole concept about paying a tribute to the ocean and combating climate change in your collections."
And another wrote: "Collaboration with nature is when you take rubber condoms for the show, put them on your hands, then throw them away and create even more garbage, am I right? Or when you create 5 collections a year?"
The designers ultimately said that the collection is all about showcasing the new "technology" they are working with to create fashion that's more in tune with nature. "
This is something that we will start right now, researching new materials, finding new ways of collaborating with nature," Herrebrugh said of the collection that also included algae t-shirts.
Vogue wrote: Anything that raises awareness about our oceans is a net positive. They’re drowning in 8 million metric tons of plastic each year. Then there are the warming temperatures, which kill corals, subsequently leading to species loss. It’s a grim picture, and that’s without taking pollution into account.
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