Gaultier Makes Fashion A Religious Experience. His S/S 2007 Haute Couture Collection.

Fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier's Spring/Summer 2007 haute couture collection introduced at Paris Couture Week clearly borrowed heavily from art and religion. The stunning gowns, headgear, shoes --even hair and makeup styling are an homage to the Virgin Mary and religious art.


below: Early christian art depicting Madonna and Child; clearly Gaultier's inspiration


His newest collection has a fabulous Byzantine feel and the 'halos' around his models are reminiscent of early depictions of christian art in stained glass windows and paintings.

Some of the fabrics are made to appear as stained glass or religious paintings:



Religious iconography is embedded within many of the gowns:

and some models even carried what appeared to be bibles in the show:


The headgear and gowns are simply stunning. Take a look:






















The designer:

Above : Gaultier Greeting The Audience and carrying a white lily, the symbol of the Annunciation

Maybe if I pray hard enough, I can afford one of his gowns....

2008 Bombay Sapphire Glass Design Competition Entries

Most of you are familiar with the Bombay Sapphire ads that show a lovely martini glass along with a bottle of the product. Depending upon how observant -or astute you are, you may have noticed that they always attribute the glass design to its creator in the small text. That's because each year Bombay Sapphire has a design contest and the winning 'glass' shows up in their ads.

This year, the winning design named Palletini, was created by Michael Krtizker. (see below):


But what you don't get to see are the numerous beautifully conceived of entries that didn't win, so I wanted to share some of those with you.

The design parameters were as listed below:





Unfortunately I haven't the time to list each and every wonderful creator of the following designs, so please be sure to see the names of these artists in gallery of finalists by clicking here.

Below are some of the entries that deserve to be admired but will not be seen in any of the ads:









So raise your glass to these beautiful designs! Salut!