Fashion as Armor 4 – Bay

On my previous blog post(blog 3: Natural Armor), I explored bodily protection that has occur in nature, such as, turtle shell, armadillo covering and the colorful skin of a poison dart frog. Nature has its own way of coming up with its own perfect design through evolution, and these following design that I came up with is my perfect idea of fashion as natural armor.

For my designs, I would like my garments and accessories to be transformable and play with the idea of metamorphosis. As in nature, every living organism will do whatever it takes to survive and protect themselves from danger, that’s why a lot of the features are very flexible in term of their purposes.

Figure 1: Poison Dart Dress

For this particular design I got inspiration from the infamous poison dart frog. The bottom is very colorful to mimic the color of the frog and the top is in black because of how deathly these frogs are. It might sound pretentious but the I chose to have a very high cut in front because it will definitely caught a lot of attention, like the poison dart frog, a very tiny creature but a very big attention catcher. Sheer black chiffon and mesh will be use for the top and for the skirt a firmer and stiffer fabric.

Figure 2: Hidden Paradise Dress

For this design, I got my inspiration from bird of paradise, they have the most ostentatious bodily decoration; however, the most extra bodily embellishments usually shown exclusively when they are trying to mate. This might seem out of place because these features uses to attract mate but not actually for physical protection, but I think reproduction is one of the most important aspect of survival. The dress is constructed in a very normal shape because the bird is normal look normal and the slit in the back and put in bright pink fabric in the back and it is going to be layered chiffon.

Figure 3: Paradise Dress

This is one of the most in-your-face dress for this design, which was inspired by bird of paradise and armadillo. Bird of paradise inspired me to design a very ostentatious dress, it is fluffy and big. Armadillo inspired the material part of this dress, I am thinking about using fiberglass instead of actual fabric because the covering of an armadillo are made of keratin which is flexible and at the same time very strong.

Figure 4: Albino turtle dress

This design is a very simple tuxedo dress; however, the lace pattern is going to be derived from an albino turtle. For me, padded shoulder makes the person who wears the garment look strong, that’s why I designed a padded shoulders for these tux dress because it represent the strenght of turtle’s shell. I chose an albino turtle because it is very rare and stunning, and I feel as though a strong and stunning person are not easy to find in this world, so they whould be wearing what represent them.

All photo/designs were provided by Bay Chaitrakulthong ’19