Futuristic fashion

   Inspiration for fashion futurism stemmed from the Italian modernist movement and the writings of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in his Manifesti du Futurisme. Futurism was an oppositional expression to the bourgeois dress code of the early 1900s. Speed, movement, and dynamism were the core design elements. In 1913, Parisian designer/artist Sonia Delaunay created her "simultaneous" dresses—colorfully painted, modern clothing with movement well suited for the dance trends of the time, namely the new foxtrot and tango.

   However, it wasn't until the youth movement in the 1960s that designers experimented with new textiles and technologies to create futuristic, space-age fashion. Designers Paco Rabanne, Rudi Gernreich, André Courrèges, and Pierre Cardin were pioneers of plastic, vinyl, metal, and other nontraditional materials used to fashion garments, materials such as laser discs, rhodoid discs, paper, and plastic paillettes. They also created innovative shapes, devised new molding and seaming techniques, and pioneered minimalist silhouettes such as the monokini, helmet hats, go-go boots, micro miniskirts, vinyl mini dresses, and the concept of unisex dressing.