Reminds me of something a designer acquaintance of mine, Melncoly, is fond of saying:
"Be yourself and you will always be in fashion.”

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“A 15-year-old boy kicked and stamped to death a woman because she was dressed as a Goth, a court heard. The drunk teenager was among a gang of five who “savagely and mercilessly” attacked Sophie Lancaster, 20, and her boyfriend, Preston Crown Court heard.

Miss Lancaster was begging the gang to stop beating Robert Maltby, 21, when they turned on her in Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire, the jury was told. The 15-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, denies murder. At an earlier hearing a 16-year-old boy, who was aged 15 at the time of the attack, admitted Miss Lancaster’s murder and admitted attacking Mr Maltby.

The accused, and four other youths, two aged 17 and one 16, have already pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm to Mr Maltby. The court heard Miss Lancaster’s facial injuries were so severe, paramedics did not know what sex she was. Tests indicated she had been kicked and stamped to death, with the pattern of some footwear still on her head. Miss Lancaster, a gap-year student, died two weeks after the attack.”

(via Religion News Blog)

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Rags was a counterculture fashion magazine ahead of its time. Published monthly in San Francisco from June 1970 through June 1971, its focus was street fashion rather than the fashion found in store windows.

Rags Lives!

(via Arthur Magazine blog).

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More Pics: Jezebel.

(via Bambooshoot).

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Your humble editor in his Shiny Apes “23″ shirt.

Shiny Apes store 1.

Shiny Apes store 2.

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A few words from former Technoccult guest blogger Fell:

Fashion is the contemporary equivalent of the mask magic used by aborigines and shamans from times past. The difference is that the shaman had the power of wisdom, thus allowing her or him to encroach situations both spiritual and sociological, utilising the masks to their advantage. Modern-day fashion wh0r3s and the vulgar masses are unaware of their own esteem, thus they lack the power inherent in themselves and rely on the costume, their fa�ade, to supplant these necessary inner wisdoms of power.

And later on, in the comments:

As for fashion, it’s always interested me. Only now am I beginning to properly discern between hipsters and trendy folk, persons with a true style and intimate understanding of fashion as a symbolic language, and then the rest � those that buy into styles and try to wrap incorporate them into their own veneer, such as skaters, preps, goths, et cetera.

I think this is a very important distinction to make, between fashion and style. How you dress has a magical/consciousness manupulation effect no matter what. But those with true sense of style seem to be more in control of really designing their own realities, rather than buying into ready made realities. And of course, someone can be a skater or goth or prep or whatever and have a deep sense of style. These people are often the trendsetters for a clique, or are on margins drifting between cliques. Either way, and consciously or not, they’re bending reality in conformity with their will.

Full Story: Occult Design.

The Center for Tactical Magic(k)’s first column in Arthur Magazine has some relevant commentary as well.

And speaking of clothes, I got my “23 / Everything is True” shirt from LVX23’s Shiny Apes store today (more here).

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The latest fashion must-have: eyeball jewellery

Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewellery called “JewelEye” in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam.

The procedure involves inserting a 3.5mm wide piece of specially developed jewellery ? the range includes a glittering half-moon or heart ? into the eye’s mucous membrane under local anaesthetic at a cost of 500 to 1,000 euros.

Wow. I’m impressed.

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A gallery of pictures of people dressed in clothes made out of toilet paper.
Link.

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XNX Designs has a catalog of clothes that look like they could have been on the cover of Mondo 2000.
Link (via Die Puny Humans).

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If runway fashion is an art, then I suppose it makes sense that it’s being used as an avenue for political expression.

David Delfin presented a show in Madrid with hooded designs resembling “burqa head-coverings that women in Afghanistan had to wear when the Muslim fundamentalist Taliban were in power.” Link (via Drudge Report)

Saudi haute couture artist Yehya al-Bashri created a bloody stained dress with a picture of a tank on it to protest Israel’s treatment of Palestine. Link (via Drudge Report).

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Pioneer Corp has hired fashion designer Michie Sone and industrial designer Naoki Harasawa to create hip wearable computers. They’re using organic electroluminescent material the thickness of paper to integrate screens into clothing.
Link (via NooFace).

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AE Innovations offers a number of homemade wearable computers and other cool hardware hacks. Dope stuff includes: a wearable 386, e-shades, and an open source IDE mp3 player. Link via /.

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A shirt that rolls up its own sleeves and never needs ironing was unveiled at a “tech-savvy Italian fashion house.”

The fabric for the prototype shirt is woven from fibres of the shape-memory alloy nitinol, interspersed with nylon. The alloy can be deformed, and then returned to its original shape when heated to a certain temperature.

Also, “A robotic exoskeleton has been created by Japanese researchers to allow nurses to lift patients effortlessly - and without damaging their backs.”

(links via BoingBoing)

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