Condom dress designs flavour of the month
Fashion design student Kutloano Molokomme had to wash 30 000 strawberry flavoured condoms in his bath to “prepare the fabric” for his entry in a condom-dress design competition.
The winning condom-dress designImage: Times LIVE
“The whole house was lubricated,” the 20-year old joked.
Molokomme's entry won second place in the competition, arranged by the SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union.
The director of the union's worker health programme, Nikki Soboil, said the competition was a collaboration between the union and the SA Fashion Designers' Institute, and was intended to “send out a clear message to youth and workers in the fashion industry that condoms are fashionable”.
Soboil said more than 25 000 of his union's members were tested for HIV this year.
Molokomme, a second-year student at a Spero Villioti Elite Design Academy, in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, said his dress was “structured” and had “puffy shoulders”.
He said young people did not understand the concept of an HIV-free South Africa, but “having to view [condoms] as part of our everyday life, as part of fashion, like jeans and tops, makes it easier to relate to”.
The top 10 outfits made of condoms were modelled at the union's Spring Queen Festival, in Cape Town last month.
Lara Klawikowski, of the Cape Town College of Fashion Design, scooped first prize and Samantha Bailley, from Design Academy of Fashion, in Woodstock, Cape Town, came third.
Source: The Times
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