The “8” dress is a design project by NYU student Hana Newman. The piece, an enclosed, transparent tank with its own oxygen pump, is a commentary on clean air or something. But it’s mostly just silly and kind of awesome.
Newman says:
8 challenges inverted quarantine and the response to perceived toxic environments by exposing it’s folly and highlighting the next trend in the green movement with an elegant dress.
8 exposes the wearer while closing her off. It glorifies the oxygen tank and is a constant reminder to the user that she is breathing clean air and to the audience that they are not. It is a catalyst for a larger conversation questioning how what we do individually influences the way we collectively solve problems and raises airwareness.
Yikes! There are more meaningless buzzwords in that statement than there are oxygen atoms inside the dress. Airwareness! Golly, that’s really something.
Although Newman’s manifesto is gibberish, I love 8. It’s not goofy on a Lady Gaga level. It looks like it could be some kind of alien armour from the future, or perhaps the garb of a sci-fi hooker. Both of those things are great! And New York smells pretty terrible in the summer—so the joke will be on us who might have smirked at 8, when its wearer, like some sort of Mecha-Aphrodite, glides gracefully through the streets, inhaling pure, clean air. Be my queen, space lady in the 8 dress.
[Hana Newman via TreeHugger]