Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

Fashion blogs have been pushing the meme that thigh-high boots are going "cyberpunk" lately, and this seems to originate with Fashionising.com, who included this paragraph in a roundup of recent boot styles:

Futurism/Cyberpunk: building upon the cyberpunk influences of recent years, some designers have thrown an element of dark futurism into the thigh-high boot mix. Particularly evident in the wound-and-bound effects of boots by Rodarte and Topshop Unique, this is a trend I expect we'll see more of in coming seasons.

Already, these "cyberpunk" boots have been seen on Twilight's Kristen Stewart (see picture) and Lindsay Lohan, among others. Here's a gallery of the boots most likely to plug your brain into cyberspace.

Hussein Chalayan adds garters to thigh-high boots. (Photo by Imaxtree, from New York Magazine.)

Jean-Paul Gaulthier, photo from Fashionising.com.

Rodarte.

Topshop Unique, from Fashionising.com.

Photoshoot from Numero Korea Magazine, via Fashionising.com.

Twilight star Kristen Stewart does a photoshoot for Allure Magazine wearing Rodarte boots. from Fashionising.com

Rodarte, from Fashionising.com.

Louis Vuitton, from Fashionising.com.

T-Shirts

Need some giant monsters in your life? Try Shanalogic's line of weird monstery goodness, including a demon-killing woman, the controversial Octophant, and the incomparable Rhinoblaster.

LikeMindedPeople has a nice series of dinosaur tees that I'm particularly fond of, such as this Bronotsaurus tee and this Stego!

Of course, the amazingness that is Threadless is packed with tees for your every nerdy whim. There's a whole collection of space-themed tees, including the crucial Disaster! model. There's also a dirty-minded robot tee, and a shark eating an airplane.

If you want tees with logos for businesses and companies from your favorite scifi movies, try Wake Up It's Time To Die. For $18, you could have a shirt that shows how much you love Encom or the Tyrell Corporation.

Mediocore has a shirt with a good-will slogan for all during this holiday season: "Be excellent to each other."

ReThink has a beautiful space shuttle tee that is a perfect memorial to our favorite soon-to-be-decommissioned NASA experiment.

Retropolis Transit Authority has a delightful line of retro-futurist shirts, and this year has given us a new one: the Space Pirate Career shirt (pictured above).

Coats & Hoodies

Need a scifi-themed coat to keep out the winter cold? You can get the Tenth Doctor's amazing trenchcoat - or his companion Martha's cute leather jacket via AbbyShot Clothiers. Yes, they are exact replicas of the costumes - approved by the BBC and everything! They may be a little pricey, but they look hot.

If you'd like something a little cheaper but still snuggly, why not try an io9 "space porn" hoodie, from Neighborhoodies? It's the perfect way to show your love for our regular feature that shows you the naked universe, from every angle. There are a few other io9 designs at Neighborhoodies too.

Scarves & Hats

Are you feeling zombified? Then how about a skull-and-bones scarf - these beauties are made by Aardvark for kids, but grownups can wear them too.

If you need to keep your head covered up, try this chainmail head accessory at ThinkGeek. Sound too crunchy? How about these soft, adorable cat demon hats from the anime Inuyasha? And then there are three different adorable Naruto hats to keep your head warm and give you additional ears.

Socks

And every nerd needs socks - that's just a fact of life. And there are two amazing places to get nerd footwear. Nothing beats a pair of Diesel Sweeties pixel socks featuring robots, space invaders, or gamer dice.

And if you need socks with anything from UFOs and the solar system, to ninjas and unicorns, you must peruse the merchandise at Sock It to Me. Crucially, Sock It To Me also sells stripey socks of every persuasion.

Freire is a London-based costume and fashion designer who loves to borrow imagery from science fiction and fantasy to clothe her models. I've always thought that medieval retro would become a popular fashion someday, and Freire's lovely armor designs combine Arthurian mystique with 1940s glamour. Plus the green-skinned Amy Winehouse lookalike is sheer genius.

Check out more of Freire's designs, and find out where to see her next show, on her site.

Smackmaid

GreenLady Winehouse


Bad Goddess

These suede beauties are on sale at Payless for only 49.99. Not too shabby considering most movie themed kicks are horribly over priced.

These are amazing, and reasonable priced! But if you want some real Trek sneaker cred, go find the Enterprise Edition made by Airwalk. Just don't wear them around me, or I will rob you.

You've got your frog vs. fly mitten pair, lion vs. gazelle, and whale vs. fish. I love the details here, like the fly wings spread across the top of your hand, and the fish smoochy-mouth at the ends of your fingers. Teach people at the bus stop about the way ecosystems work just by waving your hands. They're $26 per pair, which is a small price to pay to get a chance to wear a biology lesson on your hands all season.

Predator vs. Prey mittens from Uncommon Goods via Fashionably Geek

In anticipation of the Burton retrospective, which comes to the New York Museum of Modern Art this November, Harper's Bazaar asked Burton to dream up his fantasy fashion spread, one inspired by his own movies. Of course, these outfits will set you back a few thousand dollars apiece, to say nothing about the giant skeleton props.

Tim Burton's Magical Fashion [Harper's Bazaar via Super Punch]

Joy designed the costumes for that haven of hipster merchandising, Urban Outfitters, and they are on display at the company's Space 15 Twenty store in Los Angeles, which is currently hosting a Where the Wild Things Are art show. The costumes are for sale, with proceeds going to the Los Angeles chapter of Dave Eggers' non-profit 826.

Christian Joy & Where the Wild Things Are [Urban Outfitters via Superpunch]

New York Magazine has an amazing gallery of space-themed clothes going on sale for the fall season, including an amazing flying saucer T-shirt that's like someone went to the dealer's room at Worldcon and then zapped the dealers' wares into high fashion. Here are some of our faves:

More pictures at the link. [New York Magazine, thanks Ekaterina Sedia!]

The fibers were made from woven flax, which the paleolithic humans gathered in the wild outside their cave. You can see a few examples of the fibers, above, under the microscope. Some are twisted together, indicating they might have been used in ropes or string. Whatever woven items they were part of have long ago disintegrated, but they left behind distinct impressions in the cave's clay floor - and these impressions were what scientists saw when they examined the clay. Scientists could even discern the dyes used to color the fibers, which would have been created with colors derived from plants.

Says Harvard archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, who worked on the excavation of the cave:

This was a critical invention for early humans. They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets-for items that were mainly used for domestic activities. We know that this is wild flax that grew in the vicinity of the cave and was exploited intensively or extensively by modern humans.

He added that the ability to weave cloth and ropes would have given the people who inhabited this cave many advantages. They could have sewn animal hides into shoes, or knitted cloth sacks to carry their belongings in. Either way, cloth would have aided them in staying warm and remaining mobile.

The people who lived in the Georgian cave, pictured here, occupied it for thousands of years over many generations. Along with the 34-thousand-year-old twine, researchers also discovered flax fibers in the cave dating back to 21 thousand and 13 thousand years ago. Bar-Yosef and his colleagues' research is published in Science this week.

via Science

According to an article in the Metro, the fashionistas feel that women need to be transformed into space warriors to deal with the challenging economic situation:

There were even a few Stormtrooper helmets on the runways for fall collections. Clearly, the intention was to send a focused, futuristic warrior to do battle with the economy.

"This isn't the naive kind of '60s futuristic stuff you might think of," said Susan Cernek, senior fashion editor of Glamour.com. "This is more robotic. It's tougher. It's an android crossed with a biker."

Francisco Costa, creative director for Calvin Klein's womenswear collection, prefers to call the vibe "modernist," but he says he sees the space-age connection. "The house gives a sense of strength from structure, and that is actually nature-driven, and space is definitely a part of nature."

For the fall collection, Costa used an asymmetrical crescent hemline to soften aggressive laser cuts, and he played with fashion's equivalent of puzzle pieces that had the effect of mimicking the plates of Earth.

Cernek noted a toggling between the vast galaxy and the core of this planet as inspiration in many collections. They're opposite in some ways, she says, but similar in others: "We're looking for the light at the end of the tunnel."

I like the idea of toggling between the core of the planet and the edge of the galaxy. Can I get that toggle switch installed now, please? (Preferably with heat shields and artificial gravity and stuff.) But the new space-ageyness of fashion isn't just to do with fears about the economy. Apparently, cutting edge new fabrics make more science-fiction-looking garments possible:

Italo Zucchelli, the menswear designer at Calvin Klein, says that much of the modernity of his fall collection came from a new stiff, repellent fabric that bonded foam with traditional textiles. It probably wasn't possible to do five years ago, and, even if it was, it wouldn't have been right for the times, he says.

Foam is the new fashion look of 2010. You heard it hear first: Foam!

Images from AP, Getty Images and The Number 4 Blog.

Costume designer Wanda Piety and prop master Dragon Drohnet were two of the judges for Saturday nights Masquerade, and were kind enough to give us a post-mortem on the show and offer their insight into what makes for a winning costume or performance. This is just a taste of the nearly four dozen entries to cross the Comic Con stage, but includes some of our favorites as well as the judges':

Recently, sci-fi has come under fire in certain circles for its lack of innovation in costume design. But meanwhile, the fashion world is eating up scifi frills. Just the other night at the BET awards, I was struck by the sheer amount of crazy buckles and unnecessary straps of sparkle, metal and nylon gracing the red carpet. We've noted before that retro robots seem to be dominating the catwalks nowadays.



While current upscale fashion seems to have fully embraced its inner Mad Max, the Financial Times' Peter Gutierrez touched upon lack of visual appeal in one of the biggest genre films to come out this year: Star Trek. While one could easily argue that Star Trek was merely attempting to adhere to the fashion established by the original series how can one forget things like this?


Or this? It's pretty obvious that Trek has created some…interesting spacewear, so why is it so drab now? Even the green girls of today aren't as exciting as those of yesteryear.


In a lot of ways genre films have struggled to become a legitimate category, and in its pursuit, it seems to believe that one cannot be taken seriously when you look like this.



So, now we've thrown camp aside for the sake of mainstream acceptance and we want our realistic sci-fi. No more space babes with foil bikinis - it's all tank tops, business attire and military jumpsuits.

Scifi fashion has forgotten its roots, and now it's being taken up as irony chic by fashionistas who wouldn't touch your very favorite episode of Farscape with a ten-foot pole. While I love the recent trend of realism in my sci-fi, I miss the wacky colors and unique use of latex in the stuff of old. This new streak of science fiction (like most streaks) is merely a trend and will probably swing back sometime with the right film. I'm holding out hope for new Bruce Willis flick Surrogates . It looks cool and all, but Bruce - can you get back to the basics? No, not ‘Yippie kay yay' basics, but ‘Mila Jovovich wearing band aids and battling aliens' basics. You know Chris Tucker could use the work, and I'm always looking for Halloween costume ideas.

UK paper The Independent spotted the trend first, in a post called "The Robots Are Coming":

Karl Lagerfeld himself did the robot this season – or at least, he did doll-faced dystopiennes who looked like they'd just stepped out of a souped-up DeLorean (flux capacitor as standard)....

The hyphenated buzzword this season is "retro-futurism", think "Rachael from Blade Runner . The British design duo Preen quoted the film as one of the main sources for their collection this season, where chic mini-dresses were slashed and reconfigured. It's the 1940s, as seen through the lens of modern-day, but interpreted with the future in mind. At Balmain, dresses came in intergalactic cobalt-blue sequins, with accentuated shoulders worthy of a glamorous space cadet. Kate Moss has been spotted in a silver version at parties recently.

Photos by Getty Images. [via New York Magazine]

The ink mixes silica nanoparticles, a protective electrolite to prevent evaporation, and a ruthenium compound that, when voltage is applied, lights up. Currently, the ink - which can be screenprinted onto cloth and paper - only manages to glow red, but its creators are working on adding other color choices. Dai Nippon Printing, the company that invented the gel-like ink, hopes to be able to market the process within the next five years.

Press 'print' for a light-emitting T-shirt [New Scientist]

Pollitt told The Australian newspaper that his new fashions included a limited edition psychedelic alien print, plus a whole line of clothes designed to be reminiscent of Lynch's Dune:

David Lynch's 1984 science fiction film Dune was the inspiration for the range Pollitt presented last night in the atrium of the University of Technology in Sydney.

He enlivened his signature blacks with saturated film colours including green, yellow, orange and red, along with deep silvers and dove greys to capture the essence of deep space and its surrounding galaxies as portrayed in Dune.

Garments in Pollitt's favoured washed and treated leathers, silk georgettes and jersey fabrics had intricate panels and zippers in homage to the "second skin" space suits worn by characters in the film.

"The suits were a second skin to protect them from the elements," Pollitt said. "They felt like extensions of their muscles and ribcages and I've applied those ideas to modern garments without making them too costumey."

I really only have one question. I get how it's a tribute to Dune, as well as an edgy, post-apocalyptic, androgynous look worn by people who would not survive five minutes in an actual post-apocalyptic world. But why does nobody have any eyebrows?

Images from Sonny Photos, The Vine and A New Muse.

These images are from a series of sculptures and concept designs called Soundsuits created by Nick Cave - not the singer, the artist. Here you can see his furry suits at rest, looking very alien indeed. Cave's eye for the absurd and otherworldly is delightful. Apparently many of his suits make musical noises as they move, especially these you see below, which are covered in adornments.

These two outfits look to me like spacesuits:

And of course this is clearly a cyborg who has merged her own body with the Earth itself. Or maybe it's Swamp Thing's cute younger brother.

Cave is a former fashion designer, and you can find out more about his latest work at Feuilleton. (via Ecstatic Days)

The outfit you see above was designed by students of the Pontificia Bolivariana University in Medellin. Actually, I'm not sure if it's actually made of ethernet cables, or if it just looks like the back of a server rack at my local data center. Either way, this outfit makes me think of a future world where people store infringing wares on their bodies, and a buyer can download just by grabbing a cable and sticking it into her laptop right on the street corner.

I have no idea what this outfit is, below, but it looks like little plastic explosions. Is it cyborg fur made from more ethernet cables? And what is that weird plastic bulge thing above her crotch? External womb?

Here is another outfit, straight out of Flash Gordon. Oh how I miss the Hawkmen and the, um, Hawkwomen.

Photo via RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images.

London Fashion Week is always good for injecting a little absurd into the ho-hum catwalks surrounding it, and this year it did not disappoint. First off, Giles Deacon's robo-lady party skirts are glam enough to put even the Jetsons' Rosie on a binge diet. The Pipeline was front row, giving us all the glorious scifi fashions from Blade Runner shoulder pads on down.


Pipeline has also lined up all the silver ladies of Lond, Giles Deacon, Richard Nicoll, Giles Deacon, Louise Goldin:


These starry eyed prints will be popping up at Topshop Unique, Marios Schwab, and Peter Pilotto.

Check out the rest of the goodies and trends over at Pipeline