In yesterday's post we looked at festive celebrations in connection with tableware. Let's continue the thread, but make it fashionable by looking at three examples of "tablewear" instead, that is fashion designs inspired by tables.
The first example is not really a dress inspired by a table, but by a tablecloth: Italian designer Cinzia Ruggeri created in the early '80s the "Abito tovaglia" (Tablecloth Dress), a conceptual piece with a hybrid twist about it.
The minimalist white linen dress with straps that crisscrossed on the back had indeed a long bib-like tongue of fabric on the front that could be unrolled on a table and used as a tablecloth to create an impromptu intimate yet welcoming space that allowed the wearer to invite somebody to a nice meal (in exhibitions it was often displayed with a pink wishbone on a black plate and forks with prawns for handles).
Were eventual stains to be intended as a sort of decorative pattern? Who knows. What is clear, though, is that Cinzia Ruggeri, known for her clever word games, was probably trying to make a connection with the material of the dress - white linen - and table linens (tablecloths, napkins, placemats, table skirting and table napkins...).
The "table linens" here inspire a dress that turns itself into table linens, in a transformative act that temporarily alters the function of the garment from an item that you can wear to an item you can use to create a shared space.
The second example is Hussein Chalayan's table skirt that had a socio-political meaning. The design was part of the "After Words" (A/W 2000-01) collection inspired by the news from Kosovo about people fleeing their houses in a rush during the war and carrying their possessions on their backs.
Sadly, this theme is still relevant today if we think about the war in Ukraine and people putting their lives at risk to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better life. In Chalayan's case, this was also a personal inspiration as the designer was born in the Turkish part of Cyprus, and the collection was a way ponder about the conflict between the Turkish and the Greek populations in Cyprus (the subsequent Turkish intervention resulted in a division of the island in 1974).
Models during the show removed the covers from chairs and turned them into dresses, then the last model stepped into the middle of a round 1950s-style coffee table, lifted it up and transformed it into a skirt. In this way the refugee theme was linked to the idea of hiding and camouflaging valuable possessions or carrying them along in flight.
The third and last example of table dress is Sputniko!'s (Japanese artist and designer Hiromi Ozaki): her 2010 project Sushiborg Yukari (2010) was inspired by the "Nyotai Mori", an age-old Japanese practice of serving Sushi on naked women.
The main character in this project is a a cyborg designed in Tokyo in the future to serve sushi on her rotating belt that she wears like a rigid tutu around her hips, entertaining in this way over-worked Japanese businessmen after a long day at work.
When Yukari's artificial intelligence understands she is just being used as a sex object, she struggles to accept her role and, one day, she integrates blades in the table, modifying herself and turning into a lethal weapon to escape the sushi restaurant where she is trapped. In this case there is a horror twist to the table dress as the robot understands the concepts of violation and exploitation and plots her revenge with the mind of a cold killer.
The three designers we analysed today made through their "tablewear" pieces comments about inclusion, social issues and sexual exploitation. Now, the simplest way to create a "tablewear" piece would be coming up with a functional ready-to-wear or elegant Haute Couture design upcycling an old or a new yet cheap tablecloth (or you may commit the final criminal act and trasform some family heirloom linens into a unique design, albeit your mother / granny / auntie may probably never forgive you for doing so...).
Whatever you come out with, if you like the theme of the table, always remember to do some researches about it to give it a clever twist (or move your inspiration onto another interior design piece that we all have in our houses, avoiding maybe bed dresses, as there have been multiple incarnations of those throughout the years...), like the designers included in this post did, otherwise you may risk of creating something more similar to the "tants", the pants that are also a table that Pops gives as a present to Mordecai and Rigby in an episode of wacky animated series "Regular Show".
Comments