Retro-futurism (of up-cycled materials)
Jessica Dillard
Styles Utopian (shiny)
Dystopian (gritty)
Everything is shiny/new Lot’s of bright colors No dirt/dust/damage Happy people (skirts are shorter, everyone is pre@y) • PerfecCon • Sleek/Streamlined
• Everything is used/old • Drab, dull colors (by comparison) • Dirt/dust/damage everywhere • Sadness/rebellion (pants with boots, uglies) • ImperfecCon • Exposed wiring/hardware
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Utopian Tropes (a convenConal idea or phrase) • Zeerust: ”Something‐a character design, a building, whatever – used to be someone’s idea of futurisCc. Nowadays, though, it ironically has a strange sort of datedness to it. Also someCmes called ‘Retro‐futurisCc’.” Associated tropes: food pills, flying cars, jet pack, retro rocket, robot buddy, video phone, starship luxurious, technology/science marches on. • Everything Is an iPod in the Future: CuUng‐edge = black and white, translucent plasCc, smoothed edges, screens that slide and flip out, touch screens, unobtrusive bu@ons, minimalist adverCsing and displays, and lights that comes out of nowhere. And of course, small and convenient. • Raygun Gothic: the aestheCc of early‐ and mid‐20th century Science FicCon. Everything is slick/streamlines, with geometric shapes and clean parallel lines constructed of shiny metal and glass, lit prominently by neon. Sweeping curves, parabolas, and acute angles are used to suggest movement‐movement into the future. The bright, opCmisCc version of the future (with li@le blinking lights that don’t really do anything).
Dystopian Tropes • Used Future: a place where real people live, and where spaceships look dirty, dingy, and used (like heavy equipment at a lonely truck stop). The ships are old junk run on a shoestring by hard‐bi@en characters on the edge. Home to renegades and regular working sCffs. SomeCmes used to contrast utopian style ships/characters. • Cyberpunk: genre centered around the transformaCve effects of advanced sciences, computers and networks, and radical changes in social order. Dark and cynical. EssenCally, film noir but with computer hackers and arCficial limbs or cyberneCcs • Scavenger World: Usually post‐apocalypCc. When the knowledge of how to produce things is lost, everything becomes cobbled together of whatever to make it work. Lot’s of improvised armor and improvised weapons. • Dieselpunk: overlapping Raygun Gothic, Steampunk, and Cyberpunk, but generally 20’s to 50’s aestheCc, and with predominantly diesel powered machinery (everything is dirty/greasy).
Movies
Litera ture/ Art
Retrofuturism
Music
Fashion
Movies
Metropolis‐1927
Forbidden Planet‐1956
Forbidden Planet‐1956 Buck Rogers‐1979‐1981
Buck Rogers‐1939
Buck Rogers (comic)
Forbidden Planet‐1956
All images: Barbarella‐1968
All images: 2001: A Space Odyssey‐1968
All images: Moon Zero Two‐1969
All images: Star Wars‐1977‐1983
All images: The Fijh Element‐1997
Tron:Legacy‐2010
Mars A@acks‐1996
Tron:Legacy‐2010
Mars A@acks‐1996
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow‐2004
Music
Above: Beyonce‐2007 All others: Katy Perry‐2011
Fashion
Amy Thompson‐ FuturisCc CollecCon (2009)
Ara Jo (2009)
Misc
A7‐L Apollo pressure helmet replica
Concept art for Fallout 3
Historical/Vintage
Pucci’s bubble helmet (1960’s) For protecCng stewardesses hair from windy tarmac.
Bibliography •
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2001 РA Space Odyssey. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester. Warner Home Video, 1968. Film. Costume Designer: Hardy Amies (wardrobe) Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. Dir. Roger Vadim. Perf. Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg. Paramount, 1968. Film. Costume Designers: Jacques Fonteray/Paco Rabanne Buck Rogers. Dir. Ford I. Beebe. Perf. Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran. Vci Entertainment, 1939. Film. Costume Designer not credited. Art Director: Ralph DeLacy Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: The Complete Epic Series. Dir. Daniel Haller. Perf. Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Pamela Hensley. Universal Studios, 1979. Film. Costume Designers: Al Lehman/Sal Anthony Forbidden Planet. Dir. Fred M. Wilcox. Perf. Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen. Warner Home Video, 1956. Film. Costume Designer: Walter Plunkea Metropolis (Restored Authorized Edicon). Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Brigiae Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fr̦hlich. Paramount Pictures, 1927. Film. Costume Designer: Aenne Willkomm
• Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Theatrical Edicon). Dir. George/Irvin Lucas/ Kershner. Perf. Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher. 20th Century Fox, 1977. VHS. Costume Designer: John Mollo • The Fifh Element. Dir. Luc Besson. Perf. Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 1997. DVD. Costume Designer: Jean‐Paul Gaulcer • Tron: Legacy. Dir. Joseph Kosinski. Perf. Jeff Bridges, Garrea Hedlund, Olivia Wilde. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. Film. Costume Designer: Michael Wilkinson • When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) / Moon Zero Two (1969). Dir. Roy Ward Baker. Perf. James Olson/Catherine Schell. Warner, 1969. Film. Costume Designer: Carl Toms • "Home Page ‐ Television Tropes & Idioms ." Home Page ‐ Television Tropes & Idioms . N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2011. <hap://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage>. TV Tropes is my source to define sci‐fi tropes that idencfy with retro‐futurism styles, themes, and ideals. See arccles related to "Dieselpunk" "Cyberpunk" "Scavenger World" "Used Future" "Raygun Gothic" "Zeerust" and "Everything Is An iPod in the Future"
• Foiret, Cyril. "Ara Jo : FuturisCc Fashion Design | Trendland: Fashion Blog & Trend Magazine." TRENDLAND: FASHION & TREND BLOG * ART * DESIGN * PHOTOGRAPHY * CULTURE. Trendland Magazine, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <hap://trendland.net/ara‐jo‐futuriscc‐ fashion‐design/>. You probably recognize the design of young Central Saint Marcn’s 09 graduate Ara Jo. Selected for the CSMâ €™s 2009 Graduate Press Show, her ‘Hypnosis‘ colleccon gained the aaencon from the press as well as celebrity fashion stylist Nicola Formichev, who dressed Lady Gaga with Ara’s Jumpsuit last September in Toronto. • Foiret, Cyril. "Amy Thompson CollecCon | Trendland: Fashion Blog & Trend Magazine." TRENDLAND: FASHION & TREND BLOG * ART * DESIGN * PHOTOGRAPHY * CULTURE. Trendland Magazine, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2011. <hap://trendland.net/amy‐thompson‐futuriscc‐ colleccon/>. Amy Thompson is certainly a young designer to watch ! She just graduated with an MA in Fashion Bodywear at DeMonxort University, UK. She doesn’t have any website or porxolio online, she just contacted Fashion156 to show them her colleccon! And its beaucful ! Amy uses translucent polypropylene armor pieces to manipulate and exaggerate the shape of the body.An interescng new way of seeing the future of fashion…