It’s Pride Month and nearly a year has passed since my essay, “How Not To Be Seen: Unlearning Invisibility,” was first published here on Haute Macabre. So lately I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on that particular piece of writing which, to my surprise and subsequent joy, ended up helping more people than myself […]
As Haute Macabre readers, I expect many, if not most of you are already well acquainted with a certain late 19th century short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper.” However if that title is unfamiliar to you, before you read further, I urge you to take a few moments to experience an […]
Today we’re coveting the most recent version of Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht‘s fabulous Spider Dress (here’s the first). We remember when it first debuted back in 2015, but when isn’t reactive robotic futuristic spider couture relevant? Wipprecht’s arresting 3D-printed mechatronic design reacts to the respiration of its wearer and movements of nearby people using Intel’s Edison […]
The first time I encountered the wondrous creature that is Arran Shurvinton I was transfixed, but I had no idea who they were. Like many people, I’d simply found a viral video of someone wearing fantastic Nosferatu makeup and prosthetics, dressed in a shiny gold halter top and frilly ivory bloomers, dancing in a vintage […]
Southeast England-based artist Nora Fok creates exquisite works of wearable textile art that look like they were woven using spider silk. In reality Fok uses her own two hands and a fine nylon microfilament, not a team of highly specialized and unusually cooperative arachnids, but I’m no less amazed by her weaving, knitting, braiding, and knotting achievements. […]
I’m not terribly moved by Valentine’s Day. I’m a hopeless romantic in the right context, but the commercial holiday generally feels pretty hollow and forced to me. Or rather, it did until I found just the right angle from which to approach it. It started as one of those fanciful questions born of woolgathering: What if a sea […]
Some personal thoughts on 2017… Oh 2017, you were a very challenging and full year. In addition to all the weight, worry, and woe about current events, my personal life was fraught with stress, growing pains, and heartache, none of which was actually new to the year itself. But the tide well and truly turned […]
Months later and I’m still puzzling over Twin Peaks: The Return, trying to put my thoughts about it together into some coherent, conveyable form instead of just staring into the distance, amazed and awed. I want to discuss it and I’ve done so with friends in fits and starts, but there’s just so much process and speculate […]
Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, endlessly innovative and inspiring, just debuted her Spring 2018 Couture collection entitled “Ludi Naturae,” and now we all want to clothe ourselves in finned, leafy, scaled, and flowing dresses, gowns, and jumpsuits that look like living biotech sculptures from a futuristic utopian fever dream. ‘Ludi’ is the plural form of the Latin term […]
Our collective jaw is on the floor over Turkish designer Dilara Findikoglu‘s spectacular Spring/Summer 2018 collection. Debuted during London Fashion Week, “Seven Sisters of Inherited Sun” is a glamorous, politically and mythologically inspired amalgam of sumptuous gothic finery that’s both sleek and baroque, occult imagery, and a wonderfully lurid punk edge. From the Designer: “You are beside me, winter trees, […]
