Bondage Dresses

Bondage Dresses and Hard Hats Subvert Paris Fashion Week

Who says construction work isn't fashionable? At the Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2016 Womenswear event, Wanda Nylon proves the tough world of hard hats and I-beams to be an effective platform for high fashion.

Set in an unfinished building with sturdy wooden benches lining the walls, and hard hats passed out as party favors to attendees, the atmosphere is primed impeccably for Wanda Nylon's progressive SS16 collection. Alluring sounds play as colorful lights illuminate the girded runway. The building itself (an abandoned warehouse near the famous Le Trianon) is an integral part of the aesthetic of the showcase: Wanda Nylon is essentially building the future by deconstructing construction itself.

The Bondage Dresses brand has been known for its subversively redesigned rainwear since its 2012 launch with the now-infamous transparent plastic trench, the vinyl shirt, and all-polyurethane rainwear. The SS16 showcase certainly got its inspiration from an even more extended retro-futurism: "Excess. By all means. In everything," are the words written in bold letters on the event programs, but despite the extreme tagline, Senyk, the designer, manages to inject what she describs as “excess” into her looks with amazing taste; aluminum-colored rainwear, white dresses reminiscent of science fiction, and otherworldly black bondage dresses are just some of the brilliant looks represented.

There were no pearls, no bags, and none of your run-of-the-mill conventions: “We used a bigger panels of fabric for this collection," Johanna Senyk tells The Creators Project, making it clear that the collection acts as an effort to empower women, with tradition as an afterthought. "There is still plastic but we also used jersey, cotton, poplin... I especially like to work with felt. Bodies are flattered by it and it is easy to use. I want to make women feel beautiful and delighted. What I am doing, I do it for them. That is all that matters.”

The SS16 Wanda Nylon showcase causes a pleasant, unintended mingling of feelings. There are moments of excitement and surprise that never diverge from the genuine Senyk specificity that anyone familiar with Wanda Nylon is accustomed to. “For the first time, I did not check on Now Fashion for what was going on. I tried to stay myself without being influenced by anyone,” Senyk explains.