Elephant Art, Human Style

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

This is how you partner with retired Asian elephants to make custom dresses. Step one: Give the elephants a painting to copy onto thai silk fabric. Step Two: Elephant repaints drawing on fabric, no joke. Step Three: Sew painted fabric into custom dress for charity auction. Voila! It’s as simple as crackin’ a peanut thanks to Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project’s (AEACP) Trunk Show. AEACP hand picked a handful of eco-designers to participate in this NY Fashion Week event that raises money for an elephant sanctuary as well as an elephant rescue and abandoned well closure program in Sumatra, Thailand. See the step by step process from concept to creation right here.

Above: These drawings were made by the very talented Hazel Stewart+Brown and were given to the elephants to copy for the dress. The one on the right is aptly titled by the artist “House Made of Melted Ice-cream”. The image below shows a detail of the fabric we got back from the elephant.

Lots for work went into this dress and we had to be really really careful not to make any mistakes seeing that our fabric was painted by an elephant and all.

The event hit the runway last weekend at NY fashion week and all the outfits were auctioned away. We were really happy with how the dress turned and honored to AEACP raise all that it can for the elephants.