The World of Wearable Arts Museum

A few weeks ago it was raining pretty hard and I had a day off, so I decided to drive to Nelson and visit the famous World of Wearable Arts (WOW) museum. It was one of the coolest museums I've been to. The WOW competition started in the 1980s in Nelson. Artists submitted various wearable art pieces using all kinds of crazy materials. It's grown since the 1980s, and now people from all over the world submit pieces. Each year they have a huge show, with funky music and models doing their thing on the catwalk, showing off the wearable arts. The museum prohibits photographs, so unfortunately I can't share what I saw. But I'll try to describe some of the pieces as best I can. One section of the competition is the "bizarre bra" competition. The most memorable was a bra created by 2 men from India (yes, this is true). It was a beehive bra. The actual bra looked like a beehive, and there were about 20 little bees flying around the beehive/bra. One artist made an entire dress from hundreds of golf tees. Another artist made hundreds of origami pieces and put them together to create a dress. Others used foam, cinnamon sticks, car parts, and other recycled materials to create wearable pieces. The WOW show is in Wellington this year in September. Too bad I'll miss it!