If you’ve not yet heard of Fredrik Tjærandsen, a fashion design student at Central Saint Martins and recent L’Oreal Professional Young Talent Award Winner, you will. His ‘balloon’ dresses featured in CSM’s Fashion Design Womenswear BA graduate show for 2019, have blown up the internet, so to speak.
Fredrik Tjærandsen Balloon Dresses
Little did the upcoming Norwegian fashion designer know that his 2019 BFA fashion presentation of rubber bubble dresses was going to go viral, including an article in Vogue, but it did.
The ‘performative’ wear first appears as inflated bubbles consuming the wearer, which then deflate leaving behind a flat version of the wearable invention.
Once the bubble is released from the inside (Tjærandsen has designed a latch system which enables the model to activate deflation) the dress can be re-inflated and reworn both in ‘bubble’ or dress mode.
“It’s filled with oxygen, so there’s about two to three thousand litres of oxygen inside. A human breathes 480 litres of oxygen an hour, so you’ve got roughly three hours in the dress,” the designer revealed. “I started inflating the dresses after the show started, so the models are not in the bubble for more than 30 minutes.” Tjærandsen told Vogue.
In his instagram post titled ‘Moments of Clarity‘ Fredrik speaks from the heart about the reaction to his collection and credits all the folks that helped and participated:
“Thank you so very much for all of your kind and heart-warming response to my collection shown yesterday.
I would like to thank everyone that has helped me this year! I feel so incredibly grateful to be surrounded by such an amazingly talented group of friend, family and professionals.
I am so honored to receive the LOreal Professional Young Talent Award @lorealpro! This would not have been possible without support I received from the Les Visionnaire scholarship thank you so much Jeremy Till for believing in my work and giving me the opportunity to create my dream.
I also want to thank my amazing tutors Anna-Nicole Ziesche and @h.sproat for constantly pushing me to expand and evolve to do better. And thank you @sarahlouisegresty for all your encouragement and support. Thank you for making my @bafcsm experience amazing!
A huge thank you to my helpers @mmirae and @spicylemonsamiam for always being there from the very beginning. I couldn’t have done it without you ?
Thank you @ryonarushima and your team for creating the most amazing hair that complimented my collection in the most incredible way. Thank you @sabusuzuki for designing and creating the beautiful makeup.
Thank you to my performers @momokatemo @chanfyx @heavyhandd @joshuajsmall @bysan.z @stwzd @sag_a @hadidjah for looking absolutely stunning and being so patient and willing to wear my bubbles”
Photos courtesy of Niall Mcinerney for Voque and from Fredrik Tjærandsen’s Instagram feed