MILEVA
A Manhattan architect who likes to stretch her imagination creates dresses made of rubber bands.
Margarita Mileva’s one-of-a-kind, intricate designs weigh as much as 14 pounds and are made of as many as 18,000 rubber bands in different lengths and sizes.
“They’re very interesting to work with,’’ said Mileva, 49. “I like their texture and color, especially the pastels. And the dresses move; they jump — you dance with them.’’
The Brooklyn resident so far has hand-woven four RB dresses for exhibitions in Indianapolis, New Zealand and Germany.
The recession spurred her to put a different bounce on the basic bits of elastic. The architect, one of whose specialties is interior office design, “decided to do a jewelry line using just office materials.’’
In 2009, she transformed paper clips, business cards and rubber bands into unusual necklaces.
The rubber-band necklaces and jewelry are available for sale here and in Europe — but the RB dresses, so far, are not.
“I think of myself as an artist,’’ said Mileva, a native of Bulgaria. “I don’t see the dresses as people buying them to wear.”
She’s not sure if a friend who asked her to design a rubber-band wedding gown was serious.
Each dress takes from 90 to 120 hours to make.