Balloon Dress, Take Me Away

The ability to pull one’s head inside a turtleneck and just hide out for a while is arguably the only good reason for wearing a turtleneck, and I would very much like the option to turn all of my clothing into a personal meditation tent.

There’s an otherworldly, ethereal quality to recent fashion grad Fredrik Tjærandsen’s balloon dresses. And watching video of the dresses slowly deflating and snapping into rubber runway wear to a soundtrack of Mica Levi’s Under the Skin film score feels a bit ASMR-adjacent. I bet it’s even better to be inside the big balloon, which makes me wonder why bubble clothing isn’t more widely available.

Tjærandsen, a Central Saint Martins grad, tells Vogue his “bubbles” are based on hazy childhood memories:

“I was inspired by my own early childhood memories. I wanted to recreate the fogginess and the ‘mist’ of the memories themselves. The inflated bubbles are about being able to wear an unclear memory. When the bubble emerges onto the catwalk, it’s the dream. The deflation of the bubble visualises the moment when we realise we have a consciousness.”

The dresses are reinflatable, so living in a balloon cocoon is theoretically possible, depending on how much oxygen is in there. If any beta testing is planned, I would very much like to offer myself as a volunteer because wearing clothes and retreating into a foggy dream world are two things at which I am already incredibly proficient.

Beth Ditto’s already a fan, posting “Welp. I’m losing my shitty fucking mind .. don’t mind me .. just giving up because nothing can follow this” and Lindsay Lohan is equally, if not more, enthusiastic, commenting: “A bit weird, but cool.” When you’re right, you’re right, Linds.