Prangsta: Playing Dress Up With Recycled Luxury Fabrics

There’s no better day than Halloween to take a look at bespoke “fancy dress” shop Prangsta. The boutique, which is based in London, uses discarded scraps of vintage silk, lace, suede and charmeuse to create luxurious, fanciful costumes for those tired of cheap synthetic get-ups. Prangsta was started by St. Martin’s College of Art graduate Melanie Wilson, who describes the shop’s purpose as “turning rags to riches”:

The majority of “fancy dress” shops tend to offer cheap mass produced and unconvincing representations of a rather limited repertoire of familiar characters, often making a mockery of the concept of “dressing up” and placing a perimeter fence firmly around our imaginative possibilities. Prangsta’s feel for quality coupled with our slant towards the theatrical and bizarre has transformed all this, making the process of role-play, mask wearing and self-abandonment a more wholesome and personally rewarding experience.

In addition to their fancy-dress costumes, Prangsta also creates wonderful bespoke regular-dress clothes, for occasions such as weddings or balls. There’s a styling component too, where the designer will match you with the perfect jewels, accessories, and even make-up.

Prangsta