High-school senior Tara Frey, from Wisconsin, won’t have to worry about having the same prom dress as other girls, as her mother has made her a unique outfit from thousands of Starburst candy wrappers.

Tara and her mother Kerrin worked on the dress for the last six years, trying to collect as many wrappers as possible before the big event. Kerrin Frey told local news station KARE-TV that she got the idea for the wacky project after seeing another mother weaving gum wrappers during a hockey game. The two started collecting Starburst wrappers, but had to go the extra mile in order to complete the outfit in time for the prom. They tried calling Starburst to ask them if they could only buy the wrappers from them, but they weren’t too keen on the idea, so they had to buy up to 9 kg of candy at a time. They handed them to neighbors and friends, but asked them to keep the wrappers and try not ot tear them.

In order to be used for the sweet prom dress, every candy wrapper had to be folded eight times, and pressed with tweezers to achieve a tight weave. Not the easiest of tasks, considering there were a lot of wrappers to prepare, so Kerrin asked for help from her friends. She doesn’t know exactly how many Starburst wrappers were used on Tara’s gown, but she does remember it took five failed attempts before the two of them agreed on the design.

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They’ve only been around for about a year, but these ridiculously long Mexican pointy boots have already become a major fashion trend at dance clubs and rodeo dance floors around northern Mexico.

The guys at Vice heard about the unusual footwear and journeyed to the Mexican city of Matehuala, in the northern state of San Luís Potosí, to learn more about it. Apparently the trend started about the same time the music known as “tribal guarachero” became popular among the youth of the area. A combination of pre-Hispanic and African sounds, Colombian cumbia and modern house music mixed by young DJs, tribal quickly became the favorite dance music of young Mexicans who soon began organizing dance-offs in clubs and at rodeo festivals.

At first, everyone wore normal size cowboy boots, but at one point people started making them longer and longer, until it got out of control. It turned into a competition between ranches and neighborhoods over who had the longest, pointiest boots, and before long contests for the best chuntarito boots were organized. Much to the dissatisfaction of many fellow Mexicans who see the new fashion as a latino version of the “Jersey Shore” trend, fans of tribal guarachero kept making even longer boots and highlighting them by wearing skinny jeans. Some say they’ve seen guys wearing seven-foot long boots.

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Boston-based fashion designer Ryan Novelline has created an amazing fairytale dress using only pages from children’s Golden Books.

If you had any doubts regarding human creativity being endless, this unique creation will definitely make you a believer. Now I’m not very big on fashion, but I know impressive when I see it, and Ryan Novelline’s gown made entirely out of recycled and discarded children’s Golden Books is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.

The skirt is made entirely of illustrations from the book sewn together with metallic gold thread, while the bodice is made from the books foil spines. Both have tape backing for reinforcement. The total surface area of the skirt is 22,000 square inches.

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Juan Manuel Barrientos, a talented young chef from Colombia, has created two fully edible wedding gowns and showcased them during the Colombiatex fashion show in Medellin.

Barrieto admits he didn’t know much about fashion, let alone edible fashion, until someone asked him about clothes that you could eat. He started doing some research on the subject and didn’t stop until he was able to create two beautiful wedding gowns exclusively out of edible materials.

Wedding dresses are usually just something pretty for people to look at, so Juan Manuel Barrieto decided to use his newly acquired knowledge to give them a whole new purpose. Instead of just eye-candy for the wedding guests, his beautiful creations are real candy for the groom to enjoy on his wedding night.

The original wedding dresses are made of 2,000 sugar-glazed rose petals and champagne clothe and come with edible accessories such as bracelets, earrings, necklaces and rings made of candy, and a bouquet made of edible flowers.

Barrieto showcased his sugary gowns during a textile fair for professionals that takes place between Januarry 25 and 27, in the Colombian city of Medellin.

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Dr. Marie Catherine Klarkowski, a dentist from Munchen, Germany, has found the perfect way to open her patient’s mouths as soon as they enter her practice – she and her staff wear low-cut dirndl dresses.

Doctor Klarkowski says she came up with this unusual idea when she noticed how men looked at the waitresses wearing this kind of traditional gowns, at the annual Oktoberfest. The most important thing for us is to take away the patients’ fear. The sight of cleavages gets patients narcotised and distracted from the pain rather quickly.” says this witty dentist, who ordered 10 dresses for herself and her staff.

Believe it or not, this unusual investment paid off  as doctor Klarkowski says she receives a third more patients since the change, all male. “Competition doesn’t sleep – I know colleagues who have decorated their whole practice with Mickey Mouse and one even in Star Trek style.” the good doctor said. She also changed her 250 square meter practice into an “Alpine Lounge”, complete with an open fireplace, wooden benches and deer antlers on the walls.

“Some patients’ mouths are already wide open on entering the practice – and that is just what a dentist wants.” dr. Marie Catherine Klarkowski concluded.

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They make people look like they’ve been chewing on glow sticks, but the LED smiles created by designers Motoi Ishibashi and Daito Manabe are the new rage in Japan.

Originally created as an experiment, the LED smile is currently used in a commercial for the winter sale of a popular Japanese clothing store, and are quickly becoming one of the most sought-after fashion accessories in Japan. LED smiles are easily fixed to one’s teeth and glow different colors when you smile. Best used in the dark, these unusual gadgets change color wirelessy, through a computer interface.

Although LED smiles aren’t yet available for purchase, Ishibashi and Manabe are currently offering workshops across Japan, teaching people how to create their own.

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Margarita Mileva, an architect working in New York City, is taking the fashion world by storm with her unique dresses made from thousands of rubber bands.

Margarita first captured the attention of the fashion world with her line of rubber band accessories – M2, an offshoot of Milev Architects. The daughter of two artists took things to a whole new level, back in September 2010, when she showcased her first rubber band dress, a beautiful cocktail frock, made entirely from differently colored rubber bands.

Her latest creation, the “RB Dress“, was originally created for “Wear Is Art”, a design competition in Berlin, but it continued to attract attention even after the contest ended. Milev constructed the dress by hand, painstakingly weaving an astounding 14, 235 rubber bands into an haute-couture gown. That’s approximately 4 kilograms of rubber bands.

The practicing architect/fashion designer says she was inspired by the works of German-Swiss painter Klee and the early Bauhaus pioneers: “I was intrigued by the pastel colors used together with the black, darker ones; the black outlines and texture-like “fabric” of his (Klee’s) works. For me also of utmost importance is color theory, which he developed and taught to Bauhaus students.”

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What is the connection between people, what they eat and their cravings? This is the question Ted Sabarese had in mind when imagining his food fashion photography collection called “Hunger Pains’“.

The clothes on each model are completely made out of food and not only that, but they are also an image of that person’s cravings. This collection represents the result of the imagination and hard work of designers Ami Goodheart of SOTU Productions, Daniel Feld and Wesley Nault of Project Runway alongside Ted Sabarese’s creative vision.

Each outfit was thoroughly put together, leading up to long hour of work, as the artichoke dress alone took around 6 hours to finish.

Taking all that into consideration I think it was well worth it, given the end results.

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Young Romanian fashion designer Gabriela Mirea has created a surprising collection of trashy clothes called “Plastic is Fantastic.”

Materials used for the making of the sexy garments included plastic bags, plastic wrap, garbage bags and various other plastic materials. While many of the spectators present at the Bucharest fashion show considered Mires’s collection an homage to kitsch, the designer’s message was a totally different one. She actually wanted to point out how wasteful and disposable the fashion industry is nowadays, and at the same time show people how easy it is to make their own fashionable clothes, from things they can find around the house.

I don’t blame spectators for their opinion, especially since some of the “models” wearing Gabriela Mirea’s creations are some of the skankiest in Romania.

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Every year, teams from various countries around the world gather in Britain to compete in the Nailympics – the ultimate fake nail showdown.

For the last six years, the world’s top manicutists have been coming to Britain to show their skill in the art of fake nail making. Everyone knows everyone, but because of the accumulated  tension before every event, they don’t even talk to each other. After all, their personal egos and national pride are at stakes so there’s no place for courtesy, just focus and the desire to prove they’re number one.

Most people think of fake nails as the basic acrylic pieces glued as extensions to natural nails, but the competitors in the annual Nailympics create regular masterpieces, using  methods like airbrushing and the embedding of jewels and other trinkets. An explosion of creative madness, the fake nails entered in the “fantasy nail art” event range from fairies, pagodas and complete forest landscapes to flashing lights and revolving designs powered by small batteries strapped to the wrist.

Few people outside the nail industry has heard about the Nailympics, but it’s popularity is definitely on the rise, as the 30,000 visitors, this year, clearly show. With the manicure business still as flourishing as ever, despite the recession, the interest in over-the-top nail style is comparable to the impractical clothes showcased in fashion-shows around the world.

Some of the designs featured in the Nailympics may look ridiculous, and they may not be the perfect for doing the dishes, but to the people in the industry they “display the mastery of the nail technician’s craft.”

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We’ve seen books used as an art medium before, but never as material for unique pieces of jewelry. Jeremy May manages to capture the beauty of paper and makes it available to everyone, in the shape of various fashion accessories. His Littlefly jewels are made from hundreds of laminated sheets of paper, covered by a layer of gloss.  As each of his pieces are impossible to replicate, they are all unique.

The pages for Littlefly jewels are carefully selected, and the finish products are shipped with the book they were created from. It’s not like you can read it anymore, but it make a great packaging.

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If you’re one of those pet owners who love think their pets actually need fashionable clothes to look even cuter, Cat Prin is the tailor you’ve been looking for.

Cat Prin is a real cat tailor who believes cats look even more adorable when they’re dressed in funny costumes. His models are indeed some of the cutest cats I’ve ever seen, but the weirdest thing about his Cat Prin is the English translation of his website:

1. You need to dress a cat.

2. If a family and a cat become fortunate, you will take a commemorative photo!

3. If it finishes taking a photograph, you will make it remove clothes from a cat immediately. You will say then, without forgetting the language of gratitude to a cat.

Apparently he’s trying to say his clothes are mainly intended for taking photos, and should be taken off shortly after, but that’s pretty tough to say in English, when you’re using Google Translate.

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Complete with a nice neckline and long peacock train, the newspaper dress of designer Yuliya Kyrpo is definitely one of a kind.

Being a guy and all, I’m not very big on dresses, but I did feature quite a lot of them on OC. We’ve had the cake dress, the coffee-filter dress, the LED dress, and eve a dress made from human hair, but never one made of 1,000 old news papers.

Yuliya Kyrpo wrapped every one of the old Metro newspapers into cranes, by herself, and positioned them to create this amazing piece of art. What’s even more interesting is the way she managed to arrange the different texts and images to make her dress actually nice to look at.

The newspaper dress of Yulia Kyrpo is now on display at the London Museum of Art.

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This sounds like something you’d normally see in a movie like Zombieland, but the Best Made Co Axe Sling is a real-life fashion accessory.

So this company, Best Made, sells axes, and I’m not talking about the normal kind, you find at the local department store. These babies are stylish accessories better suited for an axe murderer or a zombie hunter, than for a lumberjack. They have a beautiful painted handle, a nice leather cap and come in a cool wooden crate.

And now they’ve even launched a new accessory for their axes, the Best Made Axe Sling makes it easy to carry your trusted axe around anywhere, just in case you run into a zombie, or if you just feel like splitting someone’s skull open. Come on, you know you’ve thought about it.

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Weedrobes is a series of ephemeral sculptures, created by Nicole Dextras, to emphasize our dysfunctional relationship to both our bodies and the environment.

Nicole Dextras’ collection of eco-wearable dresses is made of live plants, including flowers, leaves and even thorns. We’ve seen live plant dresses before, during PETA protests, but Nicole Dextras’ creations are true environmental works of art that could actually be a part of a fancy fashion show.

Images courtesy of Nicole Dextras

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