On the first day of class, this idea popped into my head. I remember seeing this picture forever ago on TikTok, it’s a dress from a Chinese fashion game I’ve literally never played but I couldn’t get it out of my head.
So I started thinking. I really like stained glass, especially for the effect it gives on walls around when the sun shines through, but I don’t want to make an actual dress out of glass. One that’s simply out of the realm of what I can do in a few weeks and also, that sounds insanely heavy. But then I thought about how colored plastic bottles often have colored shadows a similar way. So what if I made a dress from plastic that looks and acts like stained glass? And I want it to be beautiful. Oftentimes art made from trash really looks like, well, trash. I understand that’s the point, but I want to show that if we actually work to find solutions and transform our waste and overall environmental effects, it can be beautiful.
I colored some thin plastic and shot a phone flashlight through it and managed to get this! Well streaky and whatnot, it proves you can get a stained glass-like effect with plastic!
Here are my two concepts! One is to have a shorter skirt that’s a 360 of “glass” with lights inside projecting the shadows outwards. And the second one we have a long train-like back with a short fabric skirt in the front to allow sunlight to do the work! Which one would look/work better?
Where can I find a lot of plastic that has the thickness of bottle plastic?
And what can I use to connect the plastic/ make the binding look like welding of stained glass?
I love your idea! I think I prefer the concept of the train, so you can maybe get that sunlight aspect in it.
As for plastic, have you considered sourcing one of those translucent umbrellas? It should provide you with a good amount of material that already has some shape to it. Unfortunately, I don’t have much experience with vinyl so I don’t know how moldable it is but playing around with it could give you some ideas.
You have a really cool concept and I like how you incorporate so many concepts such as stained glass, fashion, and sustainability. One way to source your plastic could be from colored translucent file folders. Those usually come in a lot of colors and you’d get a lot of material for the money. One way to connect them could be using plastic welds, simply using a torch to melt them and fuse them together then file off the excess to make it seemless.
Your idea is awesome! I think the longer train-like back with a skirt would look really cool, and would cause a lot less design overhead with trying to figure out the lights. I think you could use aquarium silicone to connect all of the different plastic pieces. If your goal is to use real trash for this project, then I’m not exactly sure as to how to standardize the size of plastic; that being said, if you need any help generating empty soda bottles, feel free to reach out 😁!
Your concept of creating a dress from colored plastic to mimic stained glass is innovative and captivating. Two things to think about with light being a factor in your design: Doing the train design (which I prefer) would allow for the stained-glass to be lit with natural light and be dynamic, with the skirt option, having it lit from the inside would make it so it always has a light source but also so that the light is always the same. I think going with the train allows the colors from your design to never be the same. Consider using strong adhesives or heat welding techniques to connect the plastic pieces seamlessly.