Jolie-laid has always been a favorite aesthetic trope of mine. In people, I always find the off kilter, slightly bucktooth beauty of Lou Doillon and her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg to trump the glaringly pretty tooth-whitened beauty of their Hollywood starlet counterparts. Similarly, in art and fashion, I always love the trickery and genius of taking something plain, dull, ugly, or outright disgusting, and transforming it into something pleasing and beautiful.
Gwendolyn Huskens takes this challenge to an entirely different level, using the subject of medical maladies as the basis of inspiration for a collection of shoes she made as part of her Graduate Collection at Design Academy of Eindhoven.
While other designers have forayed into this area of influence before (I'm thinking of designers ranging from Hussein Chalayan, and more recently Feng Feng's line, Savant), few have gone out and made entire collections out of actual bandages, plaster, casts and artificial limbs. We once (as a send up of the Herve Leger bandage dress) made a 66S dress out of giant ACE bandages, and Husken has made the matching heel, ready to receive a pair of sprained ankles. Then there's the flesh-toned, thigh high boot with a hinge at the knee, that would probably lend the appearance of having two artificial legs (ending in a sexy four inch heel, natch). It sound completely gross, even filtered through the guise of "concept", yet in actuality, the shoes look bizarrely appealing, rendered in modern classic silhouettes that echo some of the designer shoes of the past season. Mummified Balenciaga booties anyone? I suppose, in the end, it is up to you to decide whether it is jolie or laid, and even though the collection is probably not being produced, it would make a very easy DIY.
A knee-high plaster cast boot, placed on an architectural heel.
The medical brace heel. Perhaps more supportive than your average heel? Somehow I doubt it...
To me, this looks like a perfectly mummified Balenciaga boot, covered in hospital plasters.
-Tiffany
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