A minimal DC-motor circuit animates the tassels independently of the wearer’s movement.
Kinetic wearable artwork · 2017–2018
The Lazy Burlesque Bra
A motorised burlesque bra that spins its own tassels, turning a familiar performance of seduction into a comic proposition for pleasure without effort or compliance.
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Project typeArtwork · Tool / prototype · Collaboration · Fashiontech
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Wearables & e-textiles · Speculative & critical design
FormKinetic wearable artwork
Developed2017–2018
ActuationDC motors / rotating tassels
CollaborationMinna Palmqvist × POPKALAB
01 · Proposition
The tassels dance by themselves
The Lazy Burlesque Bra automates one of burlesque’s most recognisable gestures: small motors set the tassels in motion while the wearer is free to stand still, lounge or simply enjoy the spectacle.
Created by Minna Palmqvist and Ricardo O’Nascimento, the work combines a white bra, feathers and gold tassels with a discreet wearable circuit. Its deliberately simple behaviour replaces disciplined bodily technique with mechanical persistence and deadpan humour.
The project uses this absurd convenience to comment on the objectification of women and the complicated promise of empowerment attached to performed femininity. A dance convention shaped for the viewer’s gaze is redirected toward the wearer’s agency, comfort and refusal to conform to prescribed standards of beauty or behaviour.
02 · Experience
Dress, switch on, do less
- 01
Wear
A familiar white bra becomes the support for feathers, tassels and a compact motorised system.
- 02
Activate
DC motors rotate the two tassels, automating a movement normally produced through repeated bodily technique.
- 03
Reframe
The wearer can pose, relax or refuse effort while the garment continues the performance on its own terms.
03 · Reflection
Automation becomes a form of refusal
The joke works because it reverses who is expected to labour for the spectacle.
Burlesque can be both a language of self-expression and a performance shaped by an external gaze. The Lazy Burlesque Bra does not try to resolve that tension. Instead, it makes it visible through a small act of technical disobedience: the expected movement continues, but the body no longer has to supply it. By locating the punchline in the mechanism, the wearable treats laziness not as failure but as permission to opt out of prescribed effort while retaining pleasure, ornament and control.
Mechanical convenience becomes a humorous critique of performed femininity and compulsory effort.
Soft feathers, lingerie construction and rotating hardware operate as one expressive system.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept and design
- Minna Palmqvist and Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Wearable interaction and technical development
- POPKALAB / Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Photography
- Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Shooting and editing
- Local Androids
