#6 Avant Garde (with Humour and Heart)

Its time for my little weekly Finesmith challenge. It might be a bit of a drag, but I'm learning a lot in the process and, most importantly, it's fun. I'm up to week #6 and the theme is avant garde.

Avant garde is a term that was very popular in the last century for cultural path finders into the new and un-explored. For the public, stuck in the 'bourgeois establishment', avant garde was the shockingly new that caused scandal and ridicule before it gradually became adopted into the mainstream as the new norm. 

Avant garde was the real catch phrase until art's only purpose became to shock...  shocking for the sake of shocking rather than for innovation or serious discourse. Personally, I find this has happened in the so called 'avant garde' of fashion... especially in SL. It has become a genre in it's own right with a very specific style that tends to look the same every season. If it has shown some direction it tending towards the hard and cold with more and more open BDSM involved in the imagery. I touched on this is the post about Mannerism. Then there's of course the liberating wearable art, which has it's own conceptual background, but which need be considered in any concluding discussion on the subject.

To be quite honest, I was rather despairing until, out of the blue, Azoury launched a fund raiser for Somalia. Of course... what else to bring some shock and new direction to our culture but some empathy and good hearted humour? So here we go...
Azoury's fund raising Constance - La Cape Afrique (not available, but is sold in other colours) over parts of the Ninja II Unisex from Ladies WhoLunch. The shiny black belt with it's squarish silver buckle chose the Active Ankle Boots from Neurolab Inc. 



The round buttons of the cape asked for Finesmith's Berry Blossom set, which asked for the sweetly crazy PYO902 hair from BooN (scrunchie with texture change). Makeup - A:S:S  Guyliner over Osakki Creativ Facepaint.
I'm fond of this outfit. It makes me smile and I enjoy wearing it.  It will linger in my inventory as a grid hopping one for sure.
Photos were taken over Quadrapop Lane's retrospective installation on LEA6.

Until next... take care and have fun!