This week’s wearable is for all those city slickers who have made their way to work today through the mist and the rain with their umbrellas intact!

Fashion tutor Deborah Shepherd won the World of WearableArt™ Sustainability Award with this unique take on the sharp city suit, which features hundreds of discarded zippers painstakingly stitched together to form pinstripes and ruffles. She made the work in celebration of the invention of the zip – or ‘separable fastener’, commenting:  ‘As 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the zipper, it seemed appropriate to pay homage to Gideon Sundback, the inventor’.  

Gideon Sundback was a Swedish-born engineer who worked for the Universal Fastener Company in Ontario, USA. While working for the company in 1913, he set about improving one of his boss’ inventions – the ‘clasp-locker’ – and also developed a machine to mass produce it. Ten years later, the industrialist B. F. Goodrich, coined the onomatopoeic term ‘zipper’ for Sundback’s wonderful invention.

All Shepherd’s City Lolita needs now perhaps is this Zip Bag from Te Papa’s collection to add a little bit of colour to her day.

 ‘Wearable of the Week’ is posted in conjunction with The WOW Factor: 25 Years in the Making, which is on display at Te Papa until 17 August 2014. For more on the World of WearableArt™ visit WOW® online.