Neuromancer Steampunk Dress

Neuromancer, the 1984 novel by William Gibson is considered the bible of cyberpunk. It is a detective noir story set in a dystopian future. Henry Dorsett Case is a burned out computer hacker who accesses Cyberspace, "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts." Even though the concept of the Internet existed when Gibson wrote the novel, it is speculated that the book directly influenced how the web was developed.

©Kay Stephens

PART ONE CHIBA CITY BLUES 1 "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. `It's not like I'm using,' Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. `It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency.' It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese."-William Gibson, Neuromancer

©Kay Stephens

I've made three of these dresses so far and this is the original. I found an old falling apart copy, nearly ripped in half and decided to repurpose the book. The bodice is from the pages of Neuromancer and the skirt is made from dyed cupcake and coffee filters and layered with poplar leaves. The steampunk vest is from handmade paper. I hope these dresses inspire you to read this groundbreaking book as well as these other books in our current dystopian authoritarian oligarchy.

A one-of-a-kind Neuromancer dress is for sale at The Red Barn Marketplace on Rt. 1 in Lincolnville.