Steampunk fashion

I've posted before on steampunk fiction and real-life steampunk gadgets. I'm fascinated by steampunk's transition from literary niche to real-world lifestyle. Science fiction famously inspires new technologies; steampunk inspires the redesign of existing technologies in a different style and, often, a different technological heritage. It's a do-over, like returning to the creation of the Ford Model T to try steam power or electricity instead of gasoline.

However, the technologies aren’t everything. Now steampunk is moving from garage hobby into fashion, in increasingly mainstream venues. The NY Times highlighted steampunk in May, with a fashion slideshow and links to a number of designers and shops.

The article describes steampunk's mixture of Victorian and modern as

inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines.

Steampunk fashion can be similarly extravagant, even Gothic at times. But where Goth can have ragged edges, steampunk tends toward Edwardian structure. However, steampunk's a difficult style to pin down; there's enormous variety. Until recently steampunk fashion has been largely DIY, but now high-end designers are picking up on the look--including Nicolas Ghesquière (Balenciaga), Alexander McQueen, and Ralph Lauren.


(Note the brass Rubiks cube at left!)
Steampunk's emergence in fashion feels like a retro fad, but that isn't quite right. Steampunk is retrofuturistic, based on a fantasy of the past and the future. Perhaps that places it closer to Goth culture, or to the Society for Creative Anachronism or other attempts to create a more romantic or adventurous lifestyle in the modern era. After all, to Jake von Slatt

[Steampunk is] essentially the intersection of technology and romance.

Fashionwise, I foresee some steampunk googling in my near future. I really like the way the look evokes a mishmash of eras.

I also like the idea that the mainstreaming of steampunk indicates some heightened interest in alternate paths to and views of the future. That would be worth arguing over a drink. The NY Times article even starts down that path, describing steampunk as accommodating

a stew of influences, including the streamlined retro-futurism of Flash Gordon and Japanese animation with its goggle-wearing hackers, the postapocalyptic scavenger style of “Mad Max,” and vaudeville, burlesque and the structured gentility of the Victorian age.

Sure enough, Balenciaga and McQueen both went retrofuturistic with last year's designs. Somehow I don't see myself 'punking it up in any of those, but the NYT points to some gorgeous stuff....

At any rate I'm inspired to pick out a retrofuturistic film for tonight. We have a small pile including Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985), Buck Rogers (the 1930s cinema serial, which looks wonderfully ridiculous), and Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). All I lack is a retrofuturistic popcorn popper. Maybe this weekend I'll read some Jules Verne.