The Espresso: Edition 151

Fashion icon Alexander McQueen did a collection in 2008 dedicated to his friend and muse, Isabella Blow, an English fashion magazine editor who loved wild and exotic colours. One of the most recognised gowns from the collection was the parrot dress, a vibrantly coloured rainbow dress with feathered wings. Now, to launch the first edition of Twelv, a magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art and culture, the editor of the magazine Hissa Igarashi, has recreated the parrot dress with 50,000 gummi bears. It took 3 weeks to make. Will it ever be worn? Probably not. Will people like it? Some will, others will hate it and think it’s stupid. Does anybody care? No. What’s more important is that the editor of the magazine had a dream and wanted to do it because he believed in it.

It takes courage to throw aside other people’s opinions and create for yourself. If you’ve got a great idea, do it for yourself and not anyone else. Don’t set out to impress others or the likelihood is you’ll either never start or your great idea will never fly. If you’ve always wanted to write, write for you. If you want to paint, paint for you. If others share the joy of what you’ve done, then all the better. All the great creatives did it because they had a great idea and did it for the sheer joy of expressing their own creative spirit. But this dress does sound tasty!

We’re sure you have read stories that tell of women and children living in developing nations that walk an average of 5 miles per day just to collect water. Sometimes they even have to haul it home in old jerry cans or buckets that originally had chemicals or pesticides stored in them. Ohio packaging firm, Greif, have created Waterwear, a backpack that they say is a better option for carting water. It’s collapsible, clean and suitable for wearing either on the back or on top of the head. The people in developing nations can have to carry up to 20L and these new Waterwear backpacks supposedly make it much lighter than having to carry jerry cans or tins of water. Greif are sending out a message to socially minded companies around the world to chip in, as their goal is to donate 100,000 packs by the end of this year. It’d be nice to see some Australian companies get behind this one.

Literacy around the world is an issue but we have found a great idea in Colombia. The programme is called the Paradiso Palazios Parapark programme and was set up about 10 years ago to help promote literacy across Colombia. The programme is part of Fundalectura in association with city parks. Here’s the idea. They’ve set up free mini libraries throughout the parks. Each one is attached to a park bench and holds about 350 books. They’re staffed 12 hours a day by volunteers, who are there to check in and check out books, answer questions and encourage children to participate and even help them with their homework. There are 100 mini libraries in the parks across Colombia and we think this is a cracking idea and hope that it takes off and spreads.

The Chronius project have created a smart t-shirt that can be worn by chronically ill patients once they leave hospital. Worn by patients suffering from heart and kidney disease, the smart t-shirt sends back information about their heart, respiratory patterns and other vital signs. The smart t-shirt is hooked up to a smart phone or PDA which transmits the information back to a carer or doctor. The upside is that the system enables treatment to be fine tuned to specific patients, reducing the need for regular check ups, taking the pressure off the medical and hospital system, but also alerting the carer immediately if the vital signs of the wearer change. This could be a life saving innovation and adaptable for many other chronic illnesses one would think.