Sometimes, even before you plop down your credit card and head out of the store swinging your new purchase in its tissue paper lined traveling sac, you realize that you are asking for trouble. As a general rule this happens when your latest acquisition is either very “fashion” or very “fashion/art hybrid” because these are two things that the general public (i.e. the person sitting next to you on the bus, your boss, or your blind date) do not understand.

Which is why I find myself greeting the collaboration between Opening Ceremony and New York based artist Aurel Schmidt with a certain amount of trepidation. I know that, in the words of the Whitney Museum of American Art (which has chosen Schmit as one of the artists included in its 2010 Biennial), “She relates her interest in finding the beauty in ugliness to the idea of the human condition as a cyclical process of renewal and decay. By using the detritus of our lives as the building blocks for her subjects, Schmidt’s work becomes a sort of memento mori—a reminder of our own vulnerability and mortality.” Yes, I understand that but (and here’s the big question) will my fellow man? Or, when faced with an outfit that includes a frayed t-shirt featuring the letter G made out of bacon, blood and a feasting fly or the letter N formulated from bloody Band-Aids, will they merely think I’m a deranged bag lady? Only time will tell...