FASHIONS FROM THE ’60s | Little Paper Dresses :: YSL Mondrian Day Dress + Campbell’s »Souper Dress« by Jamie McCarthy

When I started blogging back in ’09, I thought designKULTUR would focus on architecture, graphic design, books and other things I had studied and know a lot about.

When it comes to fashion I confess my ignorance; I find the whole scene a bit of a racket endlessly promoting cycles of consumerism. That’s why on this blog, only about a dozen posts out of 351 are in the Fashion category.

My one area of interest fashion-wise lies in the Space-Agey mid-60s, in my opinionated opinion the last time fashion was totally fresh, optimistic and original.

So I wrote a post about what I knew about space age fashion and it (not a piece about architecture or “pure” design!) became designKULTUR’s number one post by far, receiving twice as many hits than my comments about the cover art of various editions of Orwell’s 1984, its nearest competitor. Go figure. I studied the wrong things as a child.

My niece, Jamie (that’s her alter ego, spittin’ image I swear, at the NYPL, below) …

… on the other hand, is a fashionista, not in the sense of madly bashing off and buying the latest trends, but in really knowing the industry — her knowledge of the rag trade and its players is in a league of its own.

And I’ve learned a lot from her (see my tribute collage, way below).

What’s more, she’s into creating miniature replicas of the dresses she finds fascinating. They’re about 4 or 5 cm high and incredibly detailed:

She recently sent me these two “little paper dresses” of frocks that I featured on designKULTUR’s No. 1 post (thanks, Jamie, I love ’em!).

You can find out how she created these little gems by clicking on the links below.

We share an admiration for YSL’s pop-art-ish Mondrian day dress and a curiosity about Campbell Soup’s rip-off of Andy Warhol’s rip-off of their soup cans. A paper dress of a paper dress — I love it!

If you’re into fashion, I recommend you check out Jamie’s “Little Paper Dresses” and if you’d like to witness her other talent as an illustrator (yes, she’s a high-achieving double blogger!), click on “What a Kerfuffle” (love that name! — today is its 5th anniversary — Congrats Jamie!

> Click to enlarge

★ Little Paper Dresses | The “Souper” Dress – Campbell’s Soup and Andy Warhol

★ Little Paper Dresses | Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian Day Dress

Little Paper Dresses | How Little is a Little Paper Dress?