CLOTHING IN ALUMINIUM

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31543, 4 December 1967, Page 2

CLOTHING IN ALUMINIUM

<N.ZP.A.-Reuter > SYRACUSE. Provocative aluminium dress designs inspired by King Arthur’s court and the Knights of the Round Table, have opened up a new career for a 40-year-old Danish sculptress. When teaching a class in

fashion two years ago, Mrs Alfred Hobbs, an applied arts teacher at Syracuse University, told her -students to create models from anything but dress material. “I told them to try anything, the wilder the material the better,” Mrs Hobbs said. The experiment, for a fashion show, stimulated her own interest- She found a square of steel sheeting in a restaurant supply shop and thought of ways of how to make it into a dress.

The'romance of Camelot Inspired her. Working quickly with the metaL “concatenation” was bom. Thatiswhat Mrs Hobbs calls her prqcess, derived from, the mediaeval English word “concatenate,” meaning to link together. She abandoned steel because it was too heavy and creating chain-mail designs in now works in aluminium, dresses, over-blouses, and hoods. The aluminium is shipped to her in sheets, anodised to

prevent rusting, and then dyed in bold reds, silvers, blues, blacks, and greens. “The only tools L steed are wire?: cotters, finger, nails, a good imagination, and a lorof endurance.” Mrs Hobbs hooks the circles of aluminium together for a mailed outfit. She is experimenting ' with Danish heavy woven wool and soft leather as companion materials to the metals. Creating one of her unique fashions takes only a couple of hours. But the designs sell for about $2OO an outfit. Mrs Hobbs has cracked the high fashion market in New York City, selling to the Lord and Taylor department store and well-known Manhattan boutiques. Her first big break was with Lord and Taylor. “I walked in one day and was told that a shipment of Paccq Rabane fashions from France had failed to arrive. “They liked mine and bought them.” Mrs Hobbs is toying with another, creative item—dog kennels made of papier mache. "I was sculpting some abstractions of human figures in. papier mache when I thought how nice it would be ifdog houses were made of pfeces,of,sculpture, "she said, "l am planning to show mine at the Contemporary Craft Museum in .flew York.” The photograph shows a* chain-mail aluminium coat

About' 60 senior eltizena of Christchurch were entertained- at Sacred Heart College yesterday afternoon. The afternoon was organised by about 20 girlTand boys from SaCred Heart College and Xavier College, all between the ages of 13 and ■ 17 years. The elderly people, from Jubilee Home, Langford House, and Nazareth

House, were entertained with Items by a group of seminarians, the Sacred Heart College Schola, two duets from Sacred Heart, and a senior pupil from Xavier College. The afternoon was part of, a programme in which a group of girls from Saered Heart College visited the homes of senior cltltens each week.