This one should easily qualify for Ripley’s Believe or Not. An American costume designer of Greek origin, Nikos Flores, has made opera costumes from beer and soft drink cans!
This guy worked hard for 5 years, making tiny strips out of the cans and then patiently weaving them to create haute couture inspired by famous operas of the late Greek diva Maria Callas for an art
exhibition in Athens.
He did it for a good cause; to raise funds for a new opera house and Maria Callas Academy of Lyrical Arts in Athens. He is succeeding. A Greek museum has bought some of his ‘masterpieces.’
His art form had gained fame before that in Europe and US. He won an award for creating the dresses [from soft drink cans of course!] based on gowns worn by Elizabeth First.
What Flores is doing is pop art. The creator of which is Andy Warhol, who shot to fame with his paintings of Campbell’s soup cans.
Flores has naturally left many people flummoxed, chief of them being restaurateurs who look on him with suspicion as he goes about collecting used cans from garbage bins. Similarly flabbergasted were the New York airport officials who could not make out what on earth was the stuff he was carrying to Athens for the exhibition!
Why does Flores do what he does? I mean make dresses out of cans. let us hear the answer from the horse’s mouth. He says,
I wanted to do something with consumable products, because I believe our modern temples today are supermarkets and malls, where you feel you exist, in other words, I consume therefore I exist.
