Not long ago, in this galaxy, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit and became the first human in space. April 9-12th we will dress up as extra-terrestrials and party like the stars we reach for.
This celebration is known as Yuri’s Night and this year will mark the event’s 10th anniversary. Yuri’s Night events take place all over Earth and are often space-themed. The activities include everything from star-gazing in San Juan to a full-scale pop music festival at the NASA Ames Research Center and everything in between. (The official event site will help you locate the party nearest your anticipated location and give you some details regarding what kind of a partying you can expect.)
Yuri’s voyage proved that space-travel was possible, but it wouldn’t have happened had humans not first imagined the beauty of a universe surrounding our species’ home-world. So let’s praise the vision of the dreaming thinker along side that of the dedicated toil of za “werker”. In our fashion-centric opinion, the best way to honor both is to rock our most sci-fabulous spacey threads from the time the horizon of our planet eclipses our solar system’s star until it re-appears the next morning 
Science fiction films have created a veritable galaxy of costume options. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battle Star Galactica, Firefly, and countless other sources provide an almost unlimited visual library of outfits.
In keeping with the “going where no man has gone before” theme of the event however, we encourage you to consider embarking upon a couture adventure beyond the well trodden space-ways. A popular theme is to take earth-bound characters and re-birth them amongst the stars but many traditional roles have been overlooked, Space Hobo for instance. Similarly, which sci-fi classic centers around an intergalactic carny? This is our opportunity to do what we as burners have already done to so many other elements of our western culture and parody the crap out of that which has heretofore been solely the territory of nerds, conspiracy theorists, and *shutter* Hollywood producers. A few metallic accents are all you really need for that ho-hum burnerly get-up to make the jump into light-speed.
We hope to see you partying it up at some point in the space-time continuum looking stellar. Send images of your chosen space-suits to dustybacon(at)dustycouture(dot)com or click the “Follow Along” links to the right for other social media options.
*Our next installment: Episode III (that’s right it’s a countdown), will feature pictures from the Reno burner community’s Yuri’s Night 2010 extravaganza “Metropolis In SCHPAAAAAAAACE!” The pictures here have been collected from the first three Reno Yuri’s Nights. Many more great pics of past Reno Yuri’s Nights can be seen in this gallery.
