After studying engineering in Florida, Diana Dew was accepted to UC Berkeley, where she was first immersed in the counterculture movement, with which she quickly became disillusioned, and moved back to New York, where she made a meaningful impact on the East Side folk scene, and where she opened a short-lived, high-end dress shop called Isis.
Dew then joined Paraphernalia in the late summer of 1966, alongside other innovative designers of the time, and was eventually given her own division, Experipuritaneous. Her designs consisted of flexible light strips sewn into the garments, powered by a nickel-cadmium battery which provided 5 hours of battery life. A potentiometer controlled the strobe speed.
Diana Dew famously designed suits for the Blue Magoos, lighting up the stage as the music intensified. The pieces were not without their defects, however, and were prone to overheating and exploding. In the event of a malfunction, Dew simply recommended that people “please just take it to the nearest radio-TV repair shop.” She eventually sold her technology to the US military, and after a short stint in a band called Creamcheese, she retired from fashion.
Diana Dew combined the psychedelic groove of the counterculture movement and the futuristic space-age aesthetic. She rejected the use of LSD and yet wanted to create what she called “hyperdelic transsensory experiences” of light and color. “My clothes are designed to turn people on. Get rid of the inhibitions, like taking LSD but with none of the hang-ups.”
