{ the jaunty magpie }

I was very sad to hear the news last week that Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger had passed away, at age 74. His most well-known work is his character design of the creature in 1979's Alien, as well as album covers for artists from Debbie Harry to Danzig. I admit to having an obsessive love of his work ever since high school, but instead of showing an endless parade of his vividly gorgeous and macabre work, I'd like to present a stunning look at the work of British fashion designer Georgia Hardinge, whose 2013 Spring/Summer line had pieces influenced by Giger's amazing work.

H.R. Giger described his own work as "biomechanical," with the signature fusing of human bodies and parts with machines. His richly-rendered, dark and shadowy sexualized landscapes were populated with exoskeletal architecture, contrasted with the unnerving delicacy of skin and organs. His work was designed to draw you in and capture both fascination and fear. His paintings and sculptures will forever affect our minds, as will his creature designs, which changed the way we looked at movie monsters. Whether you appreciated his art or not, his influence cannot be ignored and I, for one, will miss his presence.

I wanted to share Georgia Hardinge's work because she does a beautiful job of balancing skeletal symmetry with the strength of the human figure. Giger's work portrayed women as objects of sex, but Hardinge's beautiful designs take aesthetic cues from Giger and empower the female form with dimensional textures and layers that can best be described as armor. Her designs challenge aesthetic, yet are undeniably beautiful in detail. Even though her work pre-dates Giger's passing, I can't think of a more beautiful tribute to an artist like H.R. Giger.
 
Jaunty Fine Print: Designs by Georgia Hardinge