Meet Stanyslas Fedyanin, a 16-year-old guy from Moscow, Russia, who has gained notoriety for his very successful career as an international female body. Stas, as he likes to be called, says he is heterosexual, and even has a girlfriend, he just has an androgynous figure that makes him perfect for female modelling.

There are definitely people out there who believe a guy measuring 1.80m and weighing only 45kg modeling as a woman is pretty pathetic, but for his fans and people from the fashion industry, Stas Fedyanin is perfect. The rising star of Russian modeling is often compared with Andrej Pejic, another androgynous male model known for posing as a woman. Pejic is currently known as the “king of androgyny”, but 16-year-old Fedyanin may soon been known as an androgynous usurper, as his popularity in the fashion is increasing rapidly. Ironically enough, Stas is represented by Dopamin Models, a German male model agency.

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Beach-goers usually use sunblock and umbrellas to make sure they don’t get burned, but in China they use something called a “facekini“. The fact that it makes you look like a Mexican wrestler doesn’t seem to bother anybody.

The facekini is being called “China’s latest beach craze”, but according to a Qingdao sales officer, the bizarre mask has been around for at least five years. But photos of Qingdaonese swimmers wearing the bizarre accessory have only recently gone viral on Chinese social sites, and were eventually picked up by Western photo agencies and websites sparking readers’ curiosity. The bizarre clothing item is made of elastic fabric, covers a person’s entire head and neck down to the collarbone and has holes cut out for the neck, nose and mouth. They look pretty creepy, if you ask me, but that’s apparently a very small price to pay in order to protect yourself from getting a tan while going for a swim.

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While most people are trying to remove hair from their bodies, others are more than happy to put it on, in the form of fashionable dresses.

English hairdresser Jodie Breeds has recently created a dress made entirely from human hair, which was worn by Miss England finalist Holly Lyons on the catwalk of the beauty pageant. Jodie apparently came up with the idea for the dress while contemplating how to represent her hair-salon in the Miss England contest. “My business is about hair and beauty so I wanted to represent what we’re about here. So I designed a hair dress, I sketched out the design and my aunty, Margaret Jenner, who’s a dressmaker, made it. It took about six hours altogether,” the hairdresser said. The “blonde” dress was made from hair donated by the salon’s clients and about 10 rows of hair extensions.

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Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave can use sheets of paper to create incredible garments many designers can’t really make out of fabric.

At first glance, Isabelle de Borchgrave’s creations seems made of expensive materials like silk, pleated cotton and damask, but in reality, her 18th century-inspired garments are made exclusively from paper. The Brussels-based artist painstakingly glues every “seam”, crumples, irons and fluffs paper to make it look like real lace and created buttons out of tiny rolls of paper, ultimately creating designer masterpieces you simply must see to believe they’re real. In her able hands, flimsy pieces of paper can become anything from ribbons to jewelry and feathers, a talent that makes de Borchgrave “unique”, according to French designer Hubert de Givenchy.

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A team from the University of Western Australia have added a bacteria to red wine and managed to create a cotton-like fabric that can be used to make anything from dresses to t-shirts and swimwear.

Although still in the early stages of development, this technique of making clothes from wine could one day become mainstream, at least according to the people who came up with the idea. ‘This project redefines the production of woven materials. ‘By combining art and science knowledge and with a little inventiveness, the ultimate goal will be to produce a bacterial fermented seamless garment that forms without a single stitch,’ lead researcher Gary Cass said. Still, the technology is far from perfect, and there will probably be a long time before people will be wearing casual clothes made from Pinot Noir or Merlot.

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Two years ago, Regan Kerr, a junior at George Washington High School, in Aurora, Colorado, decided to turn her small pop tab collection into a daring project: to create her own prom dress out of thousands of pull tabs.

According to 9news.com, Regan’s ingenious dress started out as a weird collection of pop tabs, which soon turned into a joke, then became a very serious two-year project that culminated on prom night, Saturday night. A couple of years ago, a friend suggested she start collecting pop tabs, and she soon got the idea to make a dress out of them, because she had always thought “a great prom dress should pop”. It was a really intriguing project, but she had never made a dress before, let alone one from thousands of pop tabs. Her friend, Sara Sanford, remembers thinking it was a cool idea, but she also believed “it would kind of peter out and wouldn’t actually happen.” She was wrong!

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Young Hina has what is most coveted by Japanese women – pale skin. And yet, she visits tanning salons every week. Not just for a sun-kissed look, but for a deeper, darker shade. Hina is one of many young Japanese women who are crazy about B-Style (Black Lifestyle). They adore the African American pop/hip hop culture to such an extent that they are ready to compromise everything natural about their looks. After all, as Hina herself admits, “part of B-Style is that you do not look Japanese.” So there are trips to the tanning salons along with hair braids, clothing and accessories that reflect B-Style to the core.

For Hina it all started when her hair turned frizzy in high school. She then got interested in Black artists and found them pretty cool. Soon she found herself in a tanning salon for the very first time. Today, she is an employee at a trendy Tokyo boutique called Baby Shoop, completely dedicated to B-Style fashion. The boutique goes by the tag-line ‘Black for Life’. Hina loves working there as she feels the shop is a “tribute to Black culture and also to their music, fashion and dance.” And it’s not just Hina but all the shop girls at Baby Shoop that undergo deep tanning on a regular basis. One of the shop girls points out, “Really, with a tan you look slimmer. You look healthy and of course great.”

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If we can have warm clothing for our heads, hands and feet, why leave out male genitalia? That’s exactly the attitude of the Croats, who used hand-knitted woolen penis warmers in the past. The centuries-old tradition has now been revived by a 55-year-old Croatian woman, Radmilla Kus. An avid knitter, she started off by making slippers for tourists, but her ‘willy warmers’ have turned out to be far more popular. When the orders started pouring in she just couldn’t keep up with them, so she had to hire a small army of knitters. Radmilla also conducts 90-minute courses, showing participants how to make the warmers

Winters in Croatia’s mountains are so severe that frost-bite was a serious problem for men in the past, especially during long horse rides. So to avoid permanent damage to their genitals, the warmers, called “Nakurnjak” came into use. They were more popular in the Mrkopalj mountain region of Croatia, where wives would knit penis warmers for their husbands. According to Radmilla, “Wives believed that keeping their man’s private parts warm allowed him to remain fertile and increased their chance of having children.” It’s funny, because in hotter countries such as where I come from, men are advised to keep their genitals cool to improve fertility! Read More »

So men have started to wear pantyhose now.They’re called Mantyhose, and there’s even a whole website, e-mancipate, dedicated to them. There might be people who find this odd, but when you come to think of it, there’s nothing particularly feminine about pantyhose, is there? They’re just tights made of a diaphanous material. And men have been wearing them for centuries too, especially in Europe, like medieval court jesters, Henry VII and even Robin Hood.

While several men in the UK and other parts of Europe have already started wearing the garment, the trend is now catching up in the US. Most men prefer to wear them as an extra layer under pants, but the more courageous tend to pair them up with shorts too. Who can deny the benefits of sporting tights? After all they do provide that smooth look to the legs, hiding any bumps and scars. They’re pretty comfortable too. Chan Kramer, the founder of e-mancipate, writes, “We believe that pantyhose for men can be an everyday clothing item, and that it can be fashionable as well.” And Francesco Cavallini, the vice-president of luxe hosiery company Emilio Cavallini, agrees, “The mantyhose are extremely elastic and stretchable and can fit men comfortably at the top. If it’s fine for Italian guys, it’s fine for the world.”

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These are some of the freakiest shoes I’ve ever set eyes on. Made by German designer Iris Shieferstein, the footwear is actually created from body parts of dead animals. She uses horse hooves and skin, snake skin and even whole dead birds as decorations.

I really doubt there are a lot of people out there willing to walk around with a pair of stuffed birds on their feet, but that isn’t stopping 45-year-old Iris Shieferstein from using all sorts of dead animal parts to make unique shoes. She agrees her creations aren’t exactly as comfortable as trainers, but she still wears them around the house. The designer says that her footwear is mainly meant for ‘aesthetic pleasure’. The animal shoes have been displayed at exhibitions around the world and Dolce & Gabanna have even created a range based on her designs. But so far, no company has had the courage to produce them for the general public.

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Vibram Fivefingers have been around for quite some time now, but frankly, I find the sight of those ‘toe shoes’ really weird. They have been pretty popular though. and now there’s a company making socks along the same lines. They’re called Swiss Protection Socks, ant they’re part of a new range from the Swiss Barefoot Company. But it’s not just the toes that make these socks unique, it’s the fact that they don’t need to be worn with shoes. Yep, you simply put them on and go for a stroll, a run or even hike up a mountain.

The Swiss Protection Socks are being marketed by the company as the best way to get the complete barefoot experience. Apparently, there are people who love being barefoot, but can’t always do that due to the possibility of injuries. With these socks however, your feet stay well protected without the need for shoes. The special socks are made of 50% Kevlar, 32% polyester, 8% spandex, and 10% cotton. Eco friendly PVC is also used, and it provides resistance to cuts. But the big question is, are the socks puncture resistant? I seriously doubt they’d offer protection against something as sharp as broken glass.

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When I was a kid, scratch-and-sniff stickers were the rage. We had all kinds of flavors and odors back then. While I have no idea if kids these days are still into such things, it does seem the in-thing for grown men, not with stickers, but jeans! Last week, a Canadian company launched a brand new line of scratch-and-sniff jeans.

Naked & Famous Denim, a company based in Montreal, has introduced the jeans at a price of $150. What’s special about them is that they smell like raspberry candy, when scratched. Unfortunately, the smell does fade over time, and you’ll be left with just a regular pair of denim pants. According to designer and company founder Brandon Svarc, the scent will last through at least five washings. But he says it shouldn’t be much of a problem since many of their male customers don’t wash their jeans very often, and some never wash them at all.

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Who could be a better model to display the functioning of a push-up bra, than a woman with small breasts? Or better still, a man with no breasts at all?

This is exactly what has been done by Hema, a Dutch lingerie company. They’ve hired Serbian male super model Andrej Pejic, to star in a lingerie ad campaign promoting their line of push-up bras. Underneath V-neck dresses, Pejic wears the company’s Mega Push-Up Bra. According to a statement released by the company, not just women, but even men can get a certain amount of cleavage. And it’s actually hard to believe that the model is a man.

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Picture this hairstyle – the back of the head shaved, with a rat tail left at the bottom. The hair at the top of the head cut short and spiky, always trimmed. Long emo bangs covering the forehead. The highlight of it all, long sideburns that start at the top of the head going all the way down to the chin. The side burns are literally glued to the cheeks with copious amounts of hair gel. And the finishing touch – a small cap perched neatly on top of the head.

Quite a sight, isn’t it? What I’ve just described to you is the Estilo Colombiano, the hairstyle adopted by the Cholombians of Monterrey in northern Mexico. They are quite well known for their meticulous style of dressing, and the pride they take in their cultural heritage. The cumbia, music brought over from Colombia, is something they are equally famous for. The people of Monterrey have been in love with this music ever since the 1960s. Several Cholombian street vendors sell trinkets that are imported from Colombia – paintings, key chains, flags, hats, t-shirts and bumper stickers, but the most popular of the items are mixed tapes of cumbia. The cumbia of Monterrey has developed a style of it’s own.

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A true designer can make a dress out of literally anything, even car parts! As a part of the month-long event celebrating 100 years of Ford in Britain, the company commissioned two young British designers to create a dress and jewelry fashioned from Ford components.

The unique ‘car dress’ was designed by Judy Clark, who is a nominee for Scottish designer of the year and has also worked with Alexander McQueen. She accepted the challenge to make the dress using Ford car parts within 1 week. The materials she worked with included various parts from a Ford Focus, along with Chiffon, Silk, Tweed, Lace, Leather and Spray paint. On her blog, Clark describes the entire designing and dress-making process from beginning to end. The parts first arrived at her place in big boxes. The components sent to her included keys, dashboard functions, rear lights, car seat covers, radio players, window buttons and more.

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