Umbrella Project: Recycled Umbrellas Turned Dress

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Doug Gunzelmann in Clothes+Accessories, Concept+Design

This is an eco-friendly alternative to slaughtering whales for fashion! Just kidding, but for nearly three hundred years, starting in the 15^th century, whalebone was used as reinforcement in women’s clothing. Used in both corsets and dresses the flexible and thin whale bone could cinch in the belly and provide billowy structure to voluminous skirts. This was all in efforts to give the impression of a petit waistline. Whalebone was also commonly used in umbrellas as support ribs in the canopy. So, why not combine the concepts, take out the whalebone, use trashed umbrellas, and create a beautiful dress!

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The Umbrella Project, brainchild of witty Berkeley Design students Feyeel and Anadamayi, takes umbrellas found abandoned and broken on the streets in Berkeley and New York (about 20 in total) and fabricates this corset dress with a back laced boned bodice.

“The goal behind the Umbrella Project is, as you might guess, to reuse the umbrellas that people casually toss aside when they (the umbrellas) fail structurally.”

Tags:

dress, recycle, umbrella

4 Responses to “ Umbrella Project: Recycled Umbrellas Turned Dress ”

Richard Millington

14. Aug, 2008

Brilliant idea. Looks great too. My first memory of going to a skip (dump) was the number of broken umbrellas scattered around. If that’s still the case today, there could be a great deal of potential in this don’t you think?

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Jessica

11. Jan, 2009

This dress is awsome! Are they going to sell it any time soon?

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Steph

21. Mar, 2009

what i saw i liked, but i couldn’t see much: could we get a full body shot, please. also what about all those bright coloured unbrellas?

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- Matt Embrey
  
  21. Mar, 2009
  
  Hi Steph, sorry we don’t have more info. I suggest contacting the designer. Here’s the website: http://www.theeel.com/~feyeel/index.html. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any contact into. There is a link to Whole Brain Studio and on there I found an email. I’m not sure if they are the same person but they might know how to get in touch with the designer. Hope that helps.
  
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