Last summer socialite and girlfriend of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich Dasha Zhukova put out the first issue of her art brut fashion magazine Garage. The buzzed-about cover featured a young woman's genitalia tattooed with a butterfly designed by Damien Hirst.
A second issue is set to be released this coming Monday at select locations, and although the cover is a bit less racy than its predecessor (it features a cartoon of a pregnant hare), the magazine still lives up to its unconventional foundations: it comes with a trio of artsy condoms.
While the condoms, whose wrappers feature the art of Keith Haring (who died of AIDS), Matt Collishaw, and the collaborative duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster, are meant to promote safe sex, they're strangely not intended for actual use.
Warnings on the wrappers declare: "this condom is a piece of art," and "this condom is not meant for use."
So while they're certainly pretty (a PR rep for the magazine sent some over to our office), and could make for a good bedroom conversation piece in some circles, it seems to us like promoting safe sex with fake condoms could be a health hazard in itself.
Issue 2 of Garage includes meditations on homosexuality, love, sex, style—with an emphasis on how the Internet refracts our ideas about those things. Zhukova writes in the introduction: "Today we are living the rainbow: all tribes are merging; everything has evolved."
What do you think of the condoms? Art or a bizarre way to promote safe sex? Let us know in the comments.
