Asked to name a seminal New York City-born musician with an intrepid preference for over-the-top fashion, and Lady Gaga would surely the first name to roll off the tongue. But there's another female musician from the city who influenced global fashion with her unique taste in stage costumes: Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O's colorful finger-painting-meets-punk approach to outfits won her fans as an icon for the new millennium — and just before Gaga, too.
While Gaga has her Haus of Gaga band of collaborators to oversee her costumes, Karen O has but one person to thank: Christian Joy, a self-taught designer based in Brooklyn. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Shrimp?" at the Diesel flagship store gallery in Shibuya presents a large collection of Karen O's costumes as well as other whimsical creations by Joy.
There's an "anything goes" aesthetic to Joy's pieces, which often look like haphazard experiments in the making. Childlike hand painting in acid colors is one of her signatures, something that's full on in her new "Kite Monsters" collection made exclusively for the exhibition.
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