In yesterday's post we looked at plants as the starting point for a fashion collection, but nature is full of wonders that can provide wonderful inspirations.
For example, at the beginning of September the crew of the research vessel E/V Nautilus posted on YouTube a video that became viral and that shows a translucent Deepstaria enigmatica jellyfish floating in the sea currents near Baker Island at the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
The peculiarity of this jellyfish is that it shape-shifts and in this video you can also see a little red crustacean consuming pieces of the jellyfish body from the inside, while remaining hidden from predators. This jellyfish does not have stinging tentacles, but it has an expansive bell-like membrane that opens and closes trapping the prey that floats inside it.
Spotted more than 2,500 feet (762 meters) below the central Pacific Ocean by the Ocean Exploration Trust, the Deepstaria seemed to move in the video in a mesmerising way, almost dancing under the sea, mutating form and turning from evanescent ghost to a lightweight plastic carrier bag.
Like the jellyfish inspiration? Check out the illustrations of jellyfish by Ernst Haeckel. The fascination of the German biologist for medusae actually rescued him from the depression in which he had falled after the premature death of his beloved wife Anna.
After seeing a medusa in a rock pool, the biologist made a sketch of it, called the species Mitrocoma Annae (Anna’s headband) in memory of his wife and wrote about the experience, "I enjoyed several happy hours watching the play of her tentacles which hang like blond hair-ornaments from the rim of the delicate umbrella-cap and which with the softest movement would roll up into thick short spirals."
Haeckel was so obsessed with jellyfish that he did a two-volume work, System of Medusae (1879 and 1881), describing 600 species. You can can download Volume I from this link (Download Haeckel_MonographiederMedusen) and Volume II from this other link (Download Haeckel_MonographiederMedusen_II). Haeckel also built a house in Jena that he named "Villa Medusa" and that featured on its ceilings frescoes of medusae that then appeared as lithographs in his book Art Forms in Nature.
What about fashion? Can you think of anything from the recently showcased S/S 20 collections that may resemble a jellyfish? Well, probably Molly Goddard's gowns favoured by those fashionistas who like being surrounded by yards of tulle floating around them and shape-shifting in Deepstaria style.
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