Some of you may have taken part in the #pillowchallenge that started at the beginning of April. The challenge consists in wearing your pillow in a stylish way, as if it were a mini-dress, and posting a picture on your favourite social network to relieve the Coronavirus quarantine and lockdown blues and have some fun with basic materials that you easily find around the house.
Creative Instagram users and celebrities alike including Halle Berry joined the challenge, but, though this idea may sound silly yet fun, in the history of fashion there is actually a paragraph about designs made with bed linen, pillows and duvets. So let's have a look at some of them.
The origins hark back to Cinzia Ruggeri's classic "Abito Letto" (Bed Dress), originally created for Vogue Casa in 1986 and consisting in a quilted duvet gown matched with a satin pillow.
The design was then reinvented by Viktor & Rolf in their Autumn/Winter 2005-06 ("Bedtime Story") collection and echoes of Ruggeri's bed dress appeared in Sarah Burton's design for Alexander McQueen's A/W 16 collection that included satin duvet jackets and coats inspired by nighttime and dreams.
The most avant-garde version of the so-called "bed dress" remains Martin Margiela's duvet coat (A/W 1999-2000) made in collaboration with Italian duvet and bedding manufacturer Featherlite. The coats were filled with 100% down feathers and featured detachable zipper sleeves.
The idea of the duvet coat was translated into something equally soft but more portable - a supersized clutch bag - by John Galliano, current creative director at Maison Margiela, a design that appeared in the S/S 18 and A/W 18 collections.
Galliano also returned to the duvet theme in the A/W 18 Artisanal collection of the maison, in which duvets appeared like Linus' proverbial security blankets.
Talking about blankets, fashion designer Marit Ilison combined sustainability with the bed theme in her "Longing for Sleep" collection (that takes the name from the Estonian title for Chekhov's short story "Let Me Sleep", better known in English as "Sleepy").
The Estonian designer employed indeed for her pieces eye-catching, colourful and patterned woollen vintage blankets from the 1970s and 1980s Soviet Union.
Fashionistas who remain loyal to duvet and quilt-inspired pieces will find comfort in Dsquared²'s quilted kimono (View this photo) from the design duo's S/S 20 collection or in Rick Owens' recent collaboration with Moncler.
This capsule includes ready-to-wear high-puff down pieces based on the favourite items of Owens and his wife Michèle Lamy.
The capsule was anticipated by the dramatic quilted puffer coats - reminiscent of Charles James' white quilted satin "Swan" down jacket with tubular shapes constructing a muscular exoskeleton around the garment (a Rick Owens' favourite) - and by the duvet-like capes with metal chain clasps that appeared on Rick Owens' A/W 20 runway, showcased in Paris while the Coronavirus outbreak had just begun in Italy.
You don't like the idea of duvets, blankets and pillows? Well, there's always bedsheets you can vandalise: check out yesterday's post to see a video about how secondhand bedsheets are cut and reassembled to make Marine Serre's sustainable designs à la Martin Margiela.
Bedsheet dresses appeared indeed in a gown from Serre's S/S19 that also integrated some upcycled neoprene scuba suits and in a cotton dress from her S/S 20 collection.
Considering that in many countries around the world the current lockdown measures will continue at least until May, hopefully this very brief history of the bed linen dress will inspire you to create something more complicated, conceptual and refined than just a basic pillow mini-dress.
Comments