A couple of weeks ago, we had a lecture about Fashion and Newsprint given by Carly Eck, a FHT alumni. This had been the topic of her dissertation and she presented the ways in which newsprint had been used in fancy dress and fashion as early as Victorian Times. She charted its use through the 20th century touching on the yellow pages dress influenced by the Pop art of the 1960s, John Galliano's Newsprint dress for Dior A/W 2000 and Viktor and Rolf's 2005 interview in Observer magazine. She also looked at how the connotations of these newsprint garments had changed. From walking advert and emblem of commodity in culture to showing one's occupation to mass production to a comment on the ephemeral nature of fashion whilst extending the life-span of a newspaper to the way fashion becomes accessible through newsprint to nostalgia.
Then I came across an an article revealing that Carrie in SATC 2 would be wearing an original Dior newsprint dress which she wore on the show the first time round which implies a lot of the connotations above. Balenciaga reinvented the idea of printing words on dress and did so futuristically in their A/W 2010 collection. However, as Nicolas Ghesquière says that his inspiration was 'Packaging and food boxes', this print remains just a pattern and nothing more.
