VICE Style's Week in Tidbits - Milking Spiders for Capes

While we at VICE Style toil to bring you in-depth articles about prostitute-managed fashion labels in Sao Paulo, transvestites wearing bikinis made out of rats, Japanese kids who inject bagels into their faces, and photo shoots set in suburban tower blocks in Russia, deep down we know that, really, all you want is quick, 30-second hits of dumb, weird, funny fashion news. That's why we created Tidbits, our frequently updated aggregator of all the dumbest, weirdest, and funniest stuff we see, watch, hear, or read in the fashion part of the internet. Here are this week's best.

HUNCHBACK CHIC

Did anyone else see Thom Brown's FW12 collection in Paris a few days ago and regret not going for the hunchbacked American football fetishist look before Thom went and made it all mainstream? That's the problem with fashion, just as you settle on a new sartorial direction that's never been done before, some designer comes and rips off your botanist meets advertising executive look for their new collection. For example, just ask the Congolese Sapeurs what they think about Paul Smith's SS10 collection. I bet they were pissed.

HOMER LAGERFELD

AleXsandro Palombo, the Italian illustrator behind the Humor Chic website and hundreds of amazing fashion-related drawings, has just drawn a whole series of Simpons characters as some of fashion's heavy hitters. Marge and Lisa as Donatella and Allegra Versace is particularly good. What's better is scrolling through his archives and finding gems like Anna Wintour being anally pleasured with a pencil and John Galliano pissing in the champagne glass of Bernard Arnault, the chairman of Louis Vuitton.

CONCRETE CLOTHING

Who the fuck spends years trying to create a new clothing material out of something you build roads with? Well, Hungarian-based Ivanka Studio and Concrete Worksx have been busy figuring out how to create concrete lightweight enough to make clothes from. Innovative, yes, but still kind of dumb. I won't ridicule these guys, though, because a couple of pieces from the collection—particularly the purses—actually make me want to own some concrete clothing, a little bit.

WERE ARENA HOMME PLUS IN ON 9/11?

There was a lot of surprised comments, post 911, that fashion hadn't changed to reflect the new worrying state of the world. Everyone was wrong. Fashion actually became a lot less anarchic. The original cover of the SS2002 issue of super-high end, massively influential menswear mag Arena Homme Plus, meant to be released a day or two after the attack,featured this photo of a bruised and bleeding Justin Timberlake set against a burning American flag. As if that wasn't already spookily prophetic enough, there was also a Raf Simons' feature inside the mag focusing on his militant-themed collection, Woe Onto Those Who Spit On The Fear Generation…The Wind Will Blow It Back. It was accompanied by an interview that touched upon Islam and Palestine, which I'm sure would have gone down well on September 12th. The entire print run had to be pulped and those issues still in existence now fetch over $100 on eBay.

SOMEONE SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF THEIR LIFE MILKING A SPIDER

Did you know that you can milk the web out of a spider? You need to weave 96 strands of web together to create one thread of gossamer, or spider silk. If that doesn't already sound like the ickiest thing in the world, think about the fact that it took 1.2 million hand-sized golden orb spiders going at it for four years to create enough gossamer for this cape, now on display at the V&A as the largest spider silk garment in the world. If you don't pussy out at the slightest mention of spiders, then you'll appreciate how amazing it is that spider silk is apparently impossible to feel, so wearing this cape would be a lot like like being naked.

Previously: VICE Style's Week in Tidbits - Crocodile Boobs and Brick Suits

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