Ethiopian marketing firm hosts condom fashion show to promote safe sex

Your eyes are not deceiving you, that “suit” and “dress” are both made entirely of CONDOMS!

Ethiopian Social Marketing Group Uses Condom Fashion Show To Promote Safe Sex

This story is from 2010, but it was so damn crazy we HAD to bring it to you.

Via IrinNews

The whims of fashion collided with some of life’s harsher realities when, during a recent fashion show in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, condoms were the fabric of choice on the catwalk.

At the Condom Clothes Fashion Show – held in January and organized by social marketing group DKT with the Zalef Fine Art and Fashion Design Institute – 10 spectacular dresses made exclusively from 10,000 male and female condoms of all colours, shapes and sizes were on show.

“In Ethiopia, condoms have a bad image; people are afraid when they want to buy condoms at the supermarket – they even try to hide the condoms quickly after they have bought them,” Emebet Alemu, designer of the dresses and organizer of the shows, told IRIN/PlusNews. “We wanted to change that by using an art event; [maybe] the show will open people’s minds a little … maybe it will make them [condoms] seem more normal for people.”

The latex garments were later modelled at a show – held under the theme, “Abstain, Be faithful and use Condoms” – at the Hilton Hotel in Ethiopia’s capital; there is also a plan for the event to be taken to Adama, a major regional city.

The fashion initiative is the latest move by DKT to try to break the stigma associated with condom use in Ethiopia; in 2009, it set up a condom café in Addis, and ran a two-month campaign to distribute condoms and kerosene to house helps in the capital.

Hit the flip to see more pics and video footage from the first-ever condom fashion show.