The Crying Dress is a beautiful project, done by Hannah Perner-Wilson and Mika Satomi aka Kobakant. The dress acts as an companion to the wife of the deceased commissioner by constantly shedding tears and playing melancholy sounds. I love this project for its simple but sophisticated aesthetics: the dress is made of water-resistant black fabric with white and black conductive threads. The designers intentionally didn’t hide many of the electrical components because the dress was made for a hypothetical scenario in 2020 when “electronics, previously known for their uniformity and quantity, almost overnight become a showcase for individuality, materiality and skilled labor” (Kobabant website, 2012).

Video of the making of this dress can be found here.

This dress stood out to me, because it has many options to change and do things that normal clothing cannot do on its own. More importantly, I love that this dress could possibly help people that are disabled and cannot move their clothing on their own. This dress could be so much more than a runway dress. The other outfits from Hussien Chalayans Summer/Spring 2007 collection has other ways of transforming wearable clothing too, and I think it’s fascinating to watch how beautiful and smooth the transition is. The designer captures the feminine figure and makes it transform to something different. The transformation may not be practical, but I think that was his intention.

– Estee Bruno