Following the Success of Thursday's Brighton Frocks show at St Martin's Church, Brighton Fashion Week returned to the same venue the following night for the Couture show. While it's hard to believe any more punters could squeeze into the venue, it seemed there was an even bigger crowd in attendance than for the packed-out Frocks show, and it was standing-room-only by the time the first model set foot on the catwalk at 8.30pm.
The Frocks offering was always going to be a hard act to follow and the first-half of the Couture show - while oozing elegance and style - lacked that dangerous, edgy, outlandish element that made the night before so exciting. However, that changed when, soon after the interval, Jess Eaton's Roadkill Couture collection absolutely blew the roof off.
Jess Eaton makes her pieces from animals that have died naturally or been killed for food. She's not out to shock, but rather wants to push recycling to the limit and make an increasingly wasteful world think about the nature of sustainability. If animals are being killed to stick in our mouths, shouldn't we at least put their skin and bones to use too? And not only does she put them to use, she creates things of pure beauty.
Amongst her amazing collection, she boasts a belt built from Marks & Spencer spare rib bones, a fascinator fashioned from rat skulls and a hat made from magpie wings. To reiterate, this wasn't even slightly about shocking the audience with gimmicks - there wasn't a ham-fisted Lady Gaga meat dress in sight - but rather was beautifully crafted and perfectly judged. It deserved the ovation it received.
For more examples of Jess' strange yet beautiful work, as well as other designers' collections and yet more backstage craziness, check out our Facebook album. While you're there, why not Like us, and we'll keep you hella up to date with all the other BFW stuff we've got going on, as well as the latest music news, reviews and interviews from around the world. And yes, you read it right, we did use the word "hella".
Words and pictures by Rob Townsend
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Update: here is Jess' statement of intent, to add a bit of context to the above:
4 comments:
Ah-mazing! Holy shitballs. So good.
This is a wonderful idea. Bravo.
Make fashion with dead animals?... Everybody dosen't eat fox or horses!!!!!Shame.
Old idea..there's already finnish Route Couture -group. They have been working on the idea since 2009.
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