IO)PLASTICS TRENDS RESEARCH AND CONCEPT
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Because they are synthetic, plastic materials have the interesting particularity to be sanitizable. They are used largely in the medical field and this tendency is spreading to the fashion world as well. However clean and safe materials plastics can be, they are generating a new barrier between body and direct surrounding. Plastics are therefore emphasizing new textures, colors and sensations that people know and appreciate more and more.
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F A S H I O N
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The sanity of these materials is indubitable. However a so extreme proximity with our body is also questioning the mental and physical effect these materials have.
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B L U R R Y
S O F T
S H I N Y
L I G H T
U N N A T U R A L
With the emergence of technologies and means of production, plastics are materials with endless possibilities and qualities. They are spreading in all aspects of our life and generating attractions. They emphasize contemporean textures and trigger our senses.
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These new sensations become more and more related to the body. Plastics become closer to the skin and our adaptation grows faster. Plastics are for and feel They provide feel secure,
now materials we seek good in. warmth and comfort, we protected, safe.
THE GARMENTS MAY VARY
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NADINE GOEPFERT
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SS 14
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NEIL BARRETT
MINUTIAE
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GEORGINA SANTIAGO
Plastic materials are now embodying the barrier between our body and the natural world. They protect us from a nature we think dangerous and uncontrolable. Because we make them we have therefore a feeling of control and safety. We appreciate the touch, the sensation and we are developing an extreme proximity with them. Their quality, materiality, plasticity is something we trust, want, and especially believe in.
The presence of (bio)plastics in our very own intamacy is now a fact. Toothpaste, beauty creams, lipstick, make up, most of the components used to produce these items are either synthetic or bioplastic ingredients. All along our daily life we are in interaction with synthetic materials, we trust them more than the natural ones, all our faith is entirely turned towards the plastics.
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R E A L I T Y
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M A K E
U P
M E D E C I N E
F O O D
P R O S T H E S I S
P A C K A G I N G
Make up, toothpaste, food or packaging, the plastics are an essential part of our life. By being more and more common, their materiality is something we become used to. Smell, touch, sound, weight are all aspects we can recognize, appreciate and research in plastics. Their omnipresence from birth to death is therefore generating new feelings, behaviors, and addictions.
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PLASTIC FESTISHISM
PVC, rubber, Latex. By their plasticity these three materials are developing attractions and fetishisms. Rubberists or Rubbermen (gay rubberists) can usualy be attracted by the tightness of the plastic garments, as well as the stimulating colors we can apply to them, or even by their distinctive smell.
With the emergence of the plastics in our daily life new sexual habits have appeared. We are constantly interacting with plastic objects, experiencing their textures and smells, they can become a second skin and provide new and unique sensations. When people having a fetish for plastic describe what they feel when they dress, rub or touch themselves (with plastics), many are saying that they feel protected and calm in contact of these materials, as if the plastics were completing them. More than a sexual excitation, plastics are providing warmth and comfort, they become deeply rooted to our personal life.
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Originally plastics have been created to replace or immitate natural materials. We were in need of better and faster ways of production, but our points of reference were still materials like glass, wood and ceramic. Slowly but certainly the plastics earned their place in our lives and became our new standards. We are now seeking for their textures and colors, for their shinyness or flexibility, for their endless possibilities. Plastics are almost perfect, their only default is to be extremely easy to produce, which makes them the symbole of our consumerism. People buy and throw plastics away almost imediately. Most of them are valueless, we do not care about them and mostly because they are completely artificial and produced in gigantic series.
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P R O J E C T
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I believe bioplastics are a very interesting solution to create more valuable plastics. But they must be adapted to what we are now used to interact with. Color, shape, texture, they must reflect the contemporaneity of the ‘‘real’’ plastics. However, because bioplastics are fragile and costly materials, they cannot replace plastics in all their uses. It is important to find the right place or environment to use them. By chosing to create beauty accessories, like shaving brush, nail polisher, or combs, I want to emphasize the proximity we have with the plastics, the daily and close contact with the skin, with our intimacy. And because they are objects we care about, the use of bioplastic is logic and implementing values as much as care for the objects created.
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(BI