Slide Show: Adrienne Antonson’s Bugs
SLIDESHOW: Fashion designer Adrienne Antonson told me recently of her hair insects, "They’re so different from my clothing, but they also relate in many ways." I had to find out what she meant.
"No matter the form I’m working in," says Antonson, the designer of State, NuBe Green’s newly renamed and relaunched line of remade vintage clothing, "my material choices share many common threads. I am attracted to cast-offs, underdogs, and undervalued items. To revive a material into something new and unexpected is thrilling to me and is the main motivation of my work."
I don’t mind insects at all, but I’m guilty of not always seeing the beauty that Antonson sees when she looks at the bug world. With pieces like this, however, I come around to her point of view.
"My end products are quite different—a summer dress, or a stick Insect—the inspiration, process, and goals are the same," reports the artist. "Both acts are meticulous and result in detailed pieces that encourage consideration of the materials. I enjoy balancing these different creative modes and find that taking a break from fashion to study moth evolution only inspires the next season’s collection."
Antonson isn’t an undiscovered hair bug artist, that’s for sure. A wide and globe-spanning variety of media sources has picked up on her work, and pretty much everyone takes the opportunity to use two or more bad puns. (Check out this example from the Huffington Post, who can sort of always be relied upon for bad puns.)
