The Unseen Collection
Experimental fashion studio The Unseen has produced a range of accessories that alter in response to environmental changes using inks developed from its colour-shifting wearable sculptures. Bowker has previously embedded her specially developed ink into feathered, leather and gemstone-encrusted headdresses. The Unseen also presented a sculptural jacket that changes colour depending on the wearer’s mood.

wearable sculptures
Wearable Structures materialize our daily struggle between control and chaos. The balance is precarious and can tip one way or another in an instant. Building materials traditionally used to construct living environments or other architectural securities are used in a frenetic fashion.

The Carrier
Mella Jaarsma’s wearable sculpture The Carrier addresses the fleeting nature of all living things, especially the temporality of humans and their urgent need to escape their current situation or move from place to place. She notes how the human condition of gathering experiences without knowing why, collecting possessions, and fearing death while longing for immortality impacts every living human being. We live in a world in which people are on the move as travelers, vacationers, explorers, and even migrants fleeing the oppressors of their beloved homelands.

Wearable Sculpture
He designs with meticulous attention to detail and longing for newness. Leather and wool are still his favourite materials. To get the effect of surprise he juxtaposes these two traditional materials with others, perhaps not typically associated with the textile industry. An important part of his design process is treating natural and synthetic fabrics with various methods, using heat, chemicals or other techniques, thus combining innovation and tradition.

Ephemeral and ethereal

Ephemeral and ethereal, the work of artist Rein Vollenga is particularly notable in his ‘wearable sculpture’. Vollenga’s unique and visceral work is darkly seductive, and his creations have been embraced by many of fashions forward thinkers as they continue to venture into darker, more fetishistic territory that celebrates a deeper, animalistic sexuality and revels in individuality and fragmented identity. Vollenga is a native of Berlin, reflected in the Teutonic avant garde nature that pervades his work, as is a dangerous, slightly sinister and hedonistic sense that harks back to pre-war Berlin’s days of decadence and ‘voluptuous panic’; his creations conjure all the allure of the decadence of a futuristic Ball Masque. Renowned for his wearable art, which takes form in sculptural headwear and accessories, the artist is now gaining the attention and patronage of the fashion industries elite; a more severe and gothic, 21st Century Dali if you will. Chasseur sat down with Rein himself to discuss his work; its origins and nature, and what drives the man behind the masks.

Wearable Sculpture

Wearable Structure: Yellow Pod
Tracy Featherstone is an Associate Professor of Art at Miami University. A SFA Scholarship and Teaching grand allowed Featherstone to travel to Ghana, West Africa in order to initiate a body of sculptural work dealing with the theme of personal environment. The language of home such as furniture, textiles, and construction is used to express the awkward, fragile, and tenuous hold on stability and structure in her work. The sculptures, wearable or free-standing, are frenzied attempts to create order from an ultimately unpredictable surrounding.