BALLOON COUTURE
Over the last few years, Japanese designer Rie Hosokai has built a reputation for creating beautiful haute couture dresses which are both fragile and fleeting – crafted from latex balloons, they have a life span of just 24 hours. Her impressively-constructed designs have won her a number of international balloon art titles, including the Milleniumjam Fashion award two years running, and more recently her work has started to attract the attention of the fashion industry as a whole.
So far, her eye for dramatic design and her unique sense of the transient nature of fashion have earned her more than 20 commissions for wedding dresses, and a solo exhibition in Japan.
Each dress is painstakingly woven by hand, and clients have a choice of colour and design, including one option with balloons which change colour according to temperature. Commanding prices of anything between £1,500 and £8,000 for each of her bespoke creations, Rie Hosokai is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to cutting-edge fashion – and demand for her designs is growing fast.
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