emerging fashions + technologies
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Junya Watanabe creates a trench coat which also doubles as a phone charger.
Charge Your Phone As You Go
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Natalie Westling (in Junya Watanabe) by Jamie Hawkesworth.
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About Influx
Influx creates a network of early adopters of fashion technology. It embraces innovation, collaboration, and connection. When I first started the project, I tried to find a way to promote the nascent filed of fashion technology because it has a lot of potentials and can actually change the way we live. Through my research I found that although studies show increased demand for smart technology in the future, widespread and long-term consumer adoption is still low. Studies show a 30% return rate and more than half of U.S. consumers who have owned an activity tracker no longer use it after six months. One important barrier is that people lack information on fashion tech. Studies show that 40% of people do not know what fashion tech products are available in the market. And the majority of people do not fully understand what fashion tech can do. For this project, I mainly focus on recently-employed young professionals who want to explore this new technology for their health, productivity and entertainment. This group has great potential to grow the fashion tech market.
I firmly believe that promoting a well-balanced way of living through fashion technology is worthwhile and promising. I hope this project can create a network for people who are interested in learning more about fashion technology, try out innovative products, and see how technology could improve their lives. This magazine engages readers in a platform about fashion, design and technology. It includes featured reviews about fashion technology products, interviews of innovative designers, experimental labs,and start-ups. It also covers curated photography to improve user engagement. Enjoy.
Elise Fang EDITOR IN CHIEF Jing (Elise) Fang
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Contents
FEATURED
PHOTOGRAPHY
Wardrobe Snacks Explores The Elegance Of Eating A collaboration between photographer Kelsey McClellan and art director Michelle Maguire.
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SCIENCE
When Chemistry Meets Contour Laura Bowker’s clothes respond to environment and feelings.
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Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’ TECHNOLOGY
Is Fashion Ready for the AI Revolution? Artificial intelligence can help businesses align supply and demand, scale personal service and design better products.
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To be truly useful, usable and desirable for people, we’ll see the following future improvements in wearable tech products.
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DEPARTMENTS
ART
INSPIRATION
Decoding ‘Manux X Machina’
Condom Material Becomes Sportswear
The key players unpack the meaning of its latest exhibit on the evening of the Met Gala.
Pauline van Dongen has created experimental athletics apparel from the same material that Skyn uses to make its condoms.
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IDEA
12 Top Tech Milestones With fashion tech becoming more prevalent and relevant with every season and fashion week, we thought we’d take a look back at its recent history.
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LIFESTYLE
The Jacket of the Future It’s still early days, but the jacket offers a glimpse into what might happen when we start connecting our clothes to the Internet.
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A NN A DO ROTH E A K E R
Wardrobe Snacks Explores The Elegance Of Eating The delightfully-named Wardrobe Snacks series is a collaboration between photographer Kelsey McClellan and art director Michelle Maguire,who together form the collective Dusty. Styled with retro clothing in satisfying palettes, the series features close-ups of hands elegantly holding a range of snacks, from an ice cream cone to an oyster, against carefully chosen clothing color schemes: coffee against cream, a donut against orange. Wardrobe Snacks was inspired by diners lacking the luxury of being seated at a table, explains McClellan, who describes the spaces her series portrays as informal—perhaps even a bit awkward—as far as eating is concerned, yet the diner always appears to be comfortable and perfectly satisfied with his chosen snack, almost zen-like.
The two first met back in 2013 while working on Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream Desserts cookbook in Columbus, Ohio–Michelle propstyled a portion of the photos and Kelsey shot. Since then they’ve worked hard to collaborate as much as possible. Kelsey moved to San Francisco almost 2 years ago, now they’re 2500 miles apart. When they see each other, about 4 times a year, they squeeze in as many shoots as possible. They daydream about living in the same place again and working together. Michelle tends to draw inspiration from people she sees out in the world, just going about their business. The way they talk, and walk, and interact with one another while performing routine errands and transactions. Sometimes they’re dressed in full
Photography by Kelsey McClellan Art direction/styling: Michelle Maguir 12
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monochrome–unintentionally yet so wonderfully and perfectly styled. Kick-started by the desire to create and stylize these small moments she had observed, their idea was to just play around with color and texture to create a series of casual,monochromatic sets. In this case, zoomed-in views of a very specific section of a body. Constantly on the hunt for items to add to her props collection, Michelle and her husband go to a lot of thrift stores and estate sales, which means she’s always gathering stuff–objects, clothing, carpet remnants, you name it. If it’s got nice color, texture, or shape, it’s going home with her.
life: paying attention to details and finding beauty and humor and entertainment in even the most mundane goings-on. For Kelsey, part of the pleasure in shooting food is that it is associated with so many different ideas and memories depending on the viewer. She really enjoys the nostalgia and the chance to present it in small, idealized vignettes. The coordination of food and clothing is meant to be light-hearted: take the Zero bar shot, for example. It’s funny because of its pairing of highs and lows–elegant and formal clothing matched up with a cheap candy bar–the folds of the fabric echoing the ripples of white chocolate.
Along with color, food is another great love that Michelle and Kelsey share, so for Wardrobe Snacks, once the clothing had been picked out, it was fun to think about an edible prop to become the star of the show. While she’s working on a series, it’s nice to set parameters—both visual and conceptual–so that each photo fits within the group as a whole. The series is an example of the sensibilities that apply to her daily
Both women say the response to the series has been exciting, garnering international attention. It’s totally gratifying to see so many people outside of their immediate network who are enjoying it with them. As for what’s next, the plans to keep moving with Wardrobe Snacks, shooting a few more pieces to round out the series while continuing to push its limited-edition prints, eventually trying to have a show somewhere— they would love to see them printed bigger and bigger.
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T O O BA CC DOCK
When Chemistry Meets Contour Laura Bowker’s clothes respond to environment and feelings.
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When Lauren Bowker was studying textiles in Manchester, she fell badly ill. When she got out of the hospital, she realized that she was done with catwalks, and that she wanted to create something with more meaning. That’s when she started studying chemistry. She wanted to know how to produce material that could speak for people. A material could give you an early warning system if you get ill, to give you an indication of how your spine or your muscles are actually performing.
creativity. It just tries to visualize unseen things in the environment, with humans, everywhere. She still uses her chemistry skills to think up clothes and art objects that transform depending on the current environment. One of them, for example, is a fabric whose colors change according to the surrounding pressure. This compound was originally thought for Formula One—to track aerodynamics by measuring the friction across the surface of cars in real time.
That doesn’t mean that Bowker abandoned fashion altogether. Quite the contrary: while still at university she designed a jacket dyed with a special ink that could change color, from yellow to black, according to pollution levels. After some years spent in consultancy, Bowker finally decided to create The Unseen, a fashion house whose aim is fusing scientific study and
A skullcap encrusted with over 4,000 chameleonic gemstones can show different color patterns according to the temperature of the wearer’s head. “If you’re sad, it will show bles and red, if you’re chilled it will be white.”
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Left: Lauren Bowker Right: The unseen women’s accessory by Lauren Bowker 18
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A material that could give you an early warning system if you get ill, to give you an indication of how your spine or your muscles are performing.
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KAT E AB NE TT
Is Fashion Ready for the AI Revolution? Artificial intelligence can help businesses align supply and demand, scale personal service and design better products.
If artificial intelligence has its way, discounting could disappear, thanks to software that tells retailers exactly what and how many products to buy, and when to put them on sale to sell them at full price. Online shopping could become a conversation, where the shopper describes the dress of their dreams, and, in seconds, an AI-powered search engine tracks down the closest match Designers, merchandisers and buyers could all work alongside AI, to predict what customers want to wear, before they even know themselves. In the last few years, a trifecta of cheap, ubiquitous, and powerful computing; big data; and the development of deep learning have triggered a revolution in artificial intelligence. The computing devices that now fill our everyday lives generate large data sets, which “deep learning” algorithms analyze to find trends, make predictions and perform specific tasks, such
as identifying specific objects in an image. The more data presented to the algorithm, the more it “learns” to do a task effectively. Earlier this year, in a blog post titled What’s Next in Computing? Chris Dixon, partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote, “Many of the papers, data sets, and software tools related to deep learning have been open sourced. This has had a democratizing effect, allowing individuals and small organizations to build powerful applications.” As a result, AI might “finally be entering a golden age,” he wrote. No area of life or business will be insulated from AI, in the same way that no part of society hasn’t been touched by the Internet.
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These developments have provoked an AI arms race. Companies like Google and Apple are snapping up AI start-ups, and in the last year, milestones in the field have arrived faster than previously expected, such as last month, when Google’s AlphaGo program beat a human champion at Go, a strategy board game considered more complex than chess. IBM’s Watson—a set of algorithms and software that is the company’s core AI product—is available as a cloud service, enabling research teams to rapidly analyses large amounts of data, such as millions of scientific papers, to test hypotheses and discover patterns. No area of life or business will be insulated from AI, in the same way that there’s no part of society that hasn’t been touched by computers or the Internet. Today it seems shocking because it’s new. But in time, AI will fade into the background as just the way things are done. 25
Aligning supply and demand Currently, fashion brands and retailers work with a limited amount of data, to predict what products to order and when to discount or replenish them. If they predict wrong, the result is loss of income due to mark-downs, waste and popular items selling out. By analyzing large amounts of data—say, the browsing and shopping history of every single one of a fashion brand’s online customers, as well as those of its competitors—AI can tell a retailer how to align product drops to match demand, and even how to display products in a store to sell as many as possible. AI’s ability to make predictions like these has particular implications for a trend-driven industry like fashion. Today, the fashion market is visible online: an AI can crawl e-commerce sites to see which products are selling; it can analyses consumer data to learn which colors or materials customers in a specific country—or even city—are buying; and it can scoop up swathes of information from social media to identify trends. This data—which was not previously available—could help brands be first to market with styles that are likely to become mainstream trends.
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Edited, a data analytic company specializing in fashion, is already doing this. Edited’s software has learned to recognize apparel products in images, and natural language processing software, which can classify these products. Edited let this loose on a bank of data on 60 million fashion products, collected from retailers and brands in over 30 countries, in over 35 languages: the result is a researchable database of organized, structured information on each of these products. “We can process the data in seconds. No one could ever do it manually,” says Geoff Watts, chief executive officer of the company. Brands that work with Edited “usually start by analyzing their competitors’ historical pricing and assortment data to make more strategic decisions, ultimately leading to better sales, stronger inventory management and less discounting,” he says.
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Ganesh Subramanian, former chief operating officer of e-commerce giant Myntra, and now co-founder of Stylumia, an AI-powered tool for fashion professionals, agrees that AI could stop fashion companies making important decisions in the dark. “A trend is nothing but a movement which has a beginning and a gradual adoption,” he says. Like Edited, Stylumia uses AI to make sense of a sea of data, from videos, e-commerce sites, social media, etc. “We can not only spot trends, but also come out with what is the relevant timing for to adopt,” he says. Scaling personal service In the days when luxury goods could only be bought in a few physical boutiques, one-to-one customer service was at the core of the industry. The Internet changed that dramatically, giving customers a seamless—but often impersonal—way to trawl thousands of products and purchase without exchanging a word. Could AI deliver that original one-toone service at scale?
One way to do this is through chat bots, which can exchange messages, stories and information with humans. Already, Microsoft’s XiaoIce chatbot is being used by 40 million people on Chinese microblogging platform, Weibo. Not all attempts to have bots interact with humans have been so successful: when Micosoft unleashed Tay, another chat bot, on Twitter last month, the bot learned from other users and rapidly began tweeting offensive messages. Machine learning can also enable brands to finely personalize their offerings to each market, or even, each individual customer. Thread, an online personal styling service, combines human stylists with machine learning algorithms. The AI crunches data like what human stylists thinks would suit an individual user, where they live and what the weather is like there, as well as the user’s ratings of products on the app, which items they click, and how customers with similar purchasing habits responded to product recommendations. The AI then trawls through 200,000 fashion products and makes a judgment on what products to recommend.
Every company in every industry should be paying very close attention to AI,there is no limit to how far it can go. Martin Ford Futurist and Author
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“Humans are limited in many ways,” says Thread founder and chief executive officer, Kieran O’Neill. Not only can AI process a vast amount of data—it can also “remember your preferences in a way that it’s just not practical for humans to do. A computer remembers everything,” he says. Michele Goetz, principal analyst covering cognitive computing and data at Forrester, agrees: “That’s where I think AI shines, being able to scale insight.” IBM’s Watson—which is working with over 500 partners in industries including retail—has partnered with The North Face to offer “guided shopping” online. The AI asks shoppers questions on factors such as gender, time of year and technical product details, to deliver tailored recommendations. “Online shopping can be overwhelming. There are so many choices and products from so many different sources,” says Keith Mercier, ecosystem manager of Watson. AI, he says, “can help retailers make sense of massive amounts of unstructured data to improve and personalize the online shopping experience.”
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Image recognition apps such as Snap Fashion and ASAP54 are also harnessing AI to build search engines for fashion. In theory, a user can snap a picture of someone on the street wearing a dress they like, or even something as abstract as a painting, and an image-recognition search engine will search a huge database of shoppable products and serve up similar items. When BoF tested these products, the search results were far from perfect, but Kieran O’Neill bets that “in the next three years it will become pretty good.” AI-assisted Design “There are AI systems today that compose music, write stories, and create artwork that no one can tell is machine-generated. So fashion design is surely not beyond AI’s capabilities,” says Pedro Domingos, author of The Master Algorithm, which predicts the revolutionary impact of machine learning, “What will likely happen, however, is not that AI will completely replace designers, but will become an indispensable tool for them.”
In the same way that the work of architects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid relies on computer modeling, “Fashion designers armed with AIs will be similarly able to come up with radical new ideas: AI will amplify their creativity rather than replace it,” reasons Domingos.“AI will absolutely challenge and replace designers,” counters Kenneth Cukier. “Let’s get real-lots of design is trial and error or boring, repetitive work. AI can help with both by making more accurate predictions of what designs will work and taking over some of the repetitive tasks.” Approaching AI now Some believe fashion brands should strike early and invest. “They certainly need to have in-house AI teams, like other companies, whether by building them from scratch or by acquiring start-ups,” advises Domingos. “Those who wait and see risk falling behind, particularly in a fast-moving industry like fashion, where consumers are the main drivers and tastes are fickle.”
“The old world of personal touch is not necessarily going away, but it’s not the way you’re going to grow your brand from a luxury standpoint,” argues Michele Forrester. When fashion brands thing about AI, she says, they need to consider the next generation of luxury customers, who were born into a world of social media, and handed at birth the ability to buy anything they want, from anywhere in the world. “They don’t have the patience for a one-on-one relationship,” she says.
Kieran O’Neill of Thread adds that, rather than dive straight in to AI investment, brands should build a strategy around AI, and work out on what the lowest hanging fruits are for their business. Some of the brands using Thread—such as Burberry, Jigsaw and Topman— signed up to sell on the platform, not because they needed the sales, but “because they really want to be close to the AI stuff we’re doing,” he says.
Others are more cautious. “The top tier brands should resist the temptation to buy into the AI world right now,” says Cukier. “Their business is being good at fashion, not smart at technology… Right now, the most promising technologies are still in the lab or in field trials, like self-driving cars. Big, smart, non-technology companies can afford to wait.” Others agree that, for the moment, partnering with third party AI specialists is the way forward. “The smartest thing a business can do, is partner with a fashion-focused tech company with AI at its core,” says Geoff Watts of Edited. “Building AI teams from scratch, or acquiring AI start-ups and retrofitting them to have a retail focus, requires a substantial investment of time and money.”
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BRIT SEATON
Lacan’s Mirror Stage
London-based fashion designer Leonie Barth works to create womenswear and accessories. Her collection ICH IST EIN ANDERER was designed with human science as inspiration, focusing on Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage.
Utilizing mirrors in her designs to physically reflect symmetrical illusions of the collection’s halved elements, Barth signifies Lacan’s idea that our mirror image completes our identity. The designer also implements color theory to conceptualize the mirror stage, taking dark bluish violet and lucent yellow, which mixed together present gray–a key color used in the collection to symbolize the polished surface of a mirror.
Originally from the German city of Gütersloh, Barth studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, presenting ICH IST EIN ANDERER as her graduate collection. A series of ten outfits visually interpret Lacan’s mirror stage concept, which divides the human psyche into three intertwined orders: the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. Lacan recognized the significance of mirrors in the creation of self-consciousness, and Barth translates his theory into expressions made possible through clothing.
Barth’s use of holographic textiles is also mindful of the Greek root word holos, meaning whole: the notion of wholeness and completion is significant to the mirror stage. The designer explains, “Clothes develop through the reflection of their own image. Missing parts are added and existing parts are reflected to create completeness.”
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Photography by Lucie Marsmann
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Our mirror image completes our identity
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I chose to focus on fashion because in our everyday lives we communicate identity and social position primary by means of our clothing.
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Ever since she can remember, Leonie Barth has always been fascinated by designing and being creative. Moreover, she has been always interested in philosophy and social sciences. Leonie Barth studied at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, presenting Ich ist ein Anderer as her graduate collection. This fashion collection was designed with human science as inspiration. But, what is for Leonie human science?
Leonie Barth has quite a few second hand clothes in her wardrobe- a lot of vintage denims. “I prefer the quality as well which is more authentic than denim you can buy on high street. Basically buying second hand is one of the most eco-friendly things to do. I am also wearing a lot of COS. Mainly because I know exactly where our products are coming from and a lot of pieces in the collection are made out of organic qualities. COS is paying a lot “I love to observe people, how they of attention to this, without feeling dress and how they behave–what the need of advertising it. This they want to express through their responsibility just comes natural clothing. I chose to focus on fashand the goal is to be 100% susion because in our everyday tainable in the future. It is very lives we communicate identity and exciting and amazing to be part social position primary by means of this process and I am proud of of our clothing. We are visual and wearing our clothes.” social entities and need to communicate never only by voice but also by sight”–she says. For Leonie, fashion is an important component of our social being. She is a very visual person, so she could not imagine to do anything else than designing.
In London there are so many great places to dine out and eat locally sourced products. Even a lot of pubs are doing this. We ask her to recommend our readers some of them. “Around my place a new Mildreds just opened—really good organic vegan food. Even for lunch you have so many options, if you want healthy and organic food. I can also recommend Ethos Restaurant, a place in central London- really good food. Theres also a farmers market every Sunday opposite side of my house which is really amazing because all the products come from local farmers”.Leonie has always been fascinated by the phenomenon of personal identity, how we develop and which context the outer appearance matters for identity.
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“At the beginning of my research, I dealt with Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos and with Jacques Lacan’s Mirrow Stage, that discusses the awareness of our ego as a subject as well as an object. After my research, my key assumption was, that identity does not exist without a visible surface and its reflections. Mirroring ourselves is imperative to construct or own identity. When I talk about mirror I do not only mean a surface that reflects ones image, I also want to convey, that we need the reflecting of another person, our counterpart. We can only become socialized personalities by observing and imitating–this is mirroring. The collection is inspired by Lacan’s philosophic thought and the resulting idea that our mirror image completes our identity. I tried to research the origin of all the materials used to ensure a collection that is sustainable and conscious.
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Fashion designer Ying Gao created these dresses to explore the aesthetic of false neutrality using a living system. yinggao.ca
Can’t and Won’t
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IMRAN AMED | LAUREN SHERMAN
Decoding ‘Manus x Machina’ BoF talks to key players at Condé Nast, Apple and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to unpack the meaning of its latest exhibit on the evening of the Met Gala.
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Fashion has always been the first to embrace technology, right from the get go. Andrew Bolton Head Curator Of The Costume Institute
The term “fashion-tech” may be less than 10 years old, but many of the garments on display in Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology date back to the early 1900s. The exhibit, which opens publicly at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5, takes a broader view of the interplay between technology and fashion, at a time when tech companies are marketing their devices as fashionable and fashion companies are eager to be seen as tech-savvy.
Organized for the eighteenth year in a row by co-chair and museum trustee Anna Wintour, who helped raise more than $12.5 million in 2015 for the museum, the event marks the one evening on the social calendar when stage-managed celebrities tend to take true high-fashion risks on the red carpet, often accompanying the designers who have created oneof-a-kind looks for them. This year, Apple, which is marketing its “wearable tech” device, the Apple Watch—as a fashion accessory, is sponsoring the exhibition. The company’s chief design officer, Jony Ive, has been the connective tissue of sorts between the technology giant and the event.
“Fashion has always been the first to embrace technology, right from the get go,” Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Costume Institute, told BoF at an exclusive preview of the exhibit on Saturday afternoon. There was still plenty of work to be “There was a calm and serenity done before the evening of May and gentleness to the overall 2, when the exhibition would be exhibition that I thought provided unveiled at the Metropolitan a wonderful context to actually Museum of Art’s Costume Institute consider and think about the Gala, an annual fundraising pieces that constituted the show,” extravaganza popularly known as Ive told BoF on Monday, outlining the “Met Ball” and often described the connections between some of as fashion’s version of the Super the work on display by designers Bowl or the Oscars—take your pick. from Mariano Fortuny to Marc Jacobs. “In our work, we’ve always tried to design in a way where you’re not aware of the problems that we’ve had to solve. That’s the job of the designer: to solve problems and explore, but not really drag you through what all the problems were. I was irritated to have to leave.”
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While newfound synergies between fashion and tech are the stuff of headlines, Bolton’s show is eager to emphasis fashion’s long-standing relationship with the technical. After all, early couture houses like Charles Frederick Worth, Emile Pingat and Jacques Doucet relied on the newly introduced sewing machine to produce garments. A major inspiration for the exhibition was Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress, which, created in 1965, was almost entirely machine-made except for the hand-done hemming. And yet, today, the word “technology” tends to conjure up digital, software-based devices, from iPhones to self-driving cars. But, for some, the term “tech” also carries another meaning: a way of thinking, rooted in the iterative, test-and-learn approach to creativity and innovation favored by those making the devices. Perhaps this is why so many fashion brands talk about thinking like a technology company. “It’s about how fast tech companies are, but also how creative they are,” Wintour said.
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Andrew Bolton Talks Manus x Machina and the Costume Institute
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With the 170-piece exhibition, Bolton takes a provocative stance, debunking the idea that something that is handmade is necessarily more valuable or more earnest, and insisting that, whether a garment is made by hand or machine, it’s the heart that counts. “I focused on designers who are known for either fetishising the hand or fetishising the machine or combining the two,” Bolton said. “I wanted to challenge the assumption of the hand versus the machine. One always thinks the hand is representative of superiority or luxury, the machine is inferior. Sometimes, a garment produced by a machine is so much more time consuming and complex.” “I’m fascinated when I look at some of the pieces in the exhibition and you really can’t tell what was made by machine and what was made by hand,” Wintour said.
Perhaps the show’s centrepiece, a Chanel haute couture gown from the Autumn/Winter 20142015 collection, best exemplifies Bolton’s intentions. The gown, moulded out of scuba knit, was dramatically accessorised by an embroidered train, its baroque design first sketched by hand then tinkered with on a computer to give it the look of pixellation. The pattern was then hand-painted with gold metallic pigment, then transfer-printed with rhinestones. Finally, pearls and gemstones were hand-embroidered on to the fabric. A blown-up digitized version of the final result—which took 450 hours to complete—is projected on to a cathedral-like dome. As the sound of Brian Eno’s The Ascent fills the air it’s a majestic sight to behold.
To a viewer, the arrangement— which essentially documents the process of engineering a garment, either by hand, by machine or a combination of both—feels orderly, almost zen-like. “Fashion is going so fast. It’s a bit like a house of cards,” he said. “There is not an appreciation of the artists, designers, the complicated processes that go behind it, so part of it is to slow it down a little bit and make people focus on the making of fashion.” What isn’t prevalent here is the kind of whizz-bang gadgetry that one might expect from a show with the word “technology” in its title. “I was very keen not to focus on what has become known as wearable technology. It was something that I don’t find very appealing aesthetically,” Bolton said. “Unless it’s someone like Hussein, who is very into concepts and uses technology as a platform to express deep issues about our society and culture. But when it comes to a jacket that tells you that you’re hot, you know how hot you are. You take it off. I was more interested in the quiet technology often hidden from view.”
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3D printing, a technique employed by Van Herpen to create garments that often feel like living organisms, was more exciting to him. “It has the potential to be as revolutionary as a sewing machine because if you get the materials correct, you could 3D print your own jacket or dress in your own home,” he said. “It’s the ultimate couture, because couture is all about the fit.” While Bolton’s work is a practice in subtlety, those after a glimpse of more gimmicky fashion-tech might have still been disappointed after surveying the crowd at the opening gala. That is, save for a few guests who took the theme to heart. Indeed, the influence of the tech world was felt mostly in the guest list, which included Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, and Tesla’s Elon Musk. What was also wafting through the proceedings was Apple itself.
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Pieces displayed at Manus x Machina Exhibition 42
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We have a wonderful past to draw from, but we’re also very interested in moving into the future.
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page 46 OMA designs The Met’s Manus x Machina fashion exhibition page 47 Vistors at Manus x Machina Exhibition
To be sure, the Apple Watch has attracted its fair share of naysayers, though its success is difficult to gauge with certainly as Apple doesn’t break out sales of the device in its public disclosures. But the company’s sponsorship of Manus x Machina comes at a tough time for Apple, which recently reported a year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue for the first time since 2003. While Ive declined to discuss the future of the Apple Watch directly, he was willing to speak more broadly about his general approach when it comes to the progression of a product. “It’s quite interesting that if you look back at the first generation of the iPod—what happens in the next two, three, four years is dramatic. You’d be very surprised about some of the things you would absolutely assume that the first Phone did and it didn’t have,” he said. “Of course, this is a new category for us, one that we think is such a natural one because we think in a very authentic way. It’s not us being opportunistic in the way our competitors are. It’s not us thinking. Well, this is a growing category. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Wintour’s brand, Vogue, and Apple certainly have quite a bit in common. They are often worshiped, occasionally reviled, and seemingly tend to operate under the predilection that the consumer doesn’t know what she wants before she wants it. But in recent cycles, Apple and Vogue have both opened up.
For any brand, iteration is essential to staying ahead in today’s ever-changing world. “I personally love products when they’re at this level of maturity,” Ive said of the Apple Watch. “You know we can’t talk about future products, but if you look at what we typically do is that we don’t make something and stop.”
For Apple, this has meant creating an Apple Watch in a way that can be personalized. For Vogue, it’s meant embracing the Internet and creating more varied content to serve a broader audience online. But whether their brand power will keep them on top through the next cycle of media and technology remains to be seen. “We have a wonderful past to draw from, but we’re also very interested in moving into the future,” Wintour said, regarding what brands like Vogue, Apple and Hermès-another Apple collaborator—have in common. “From our own point of view at Condé Nast, I think that we have always believed in tradition and quality and reaching out to audiences in as many ways as we can and now, through companies like Apple, we just have so many ways to do it.”
What Manus x Machina shows it that this has long been the case for many of the world’s most influential clothing designers.
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KAT E AB N ET T
Condom Material Becomes Sportswear Dutch fashion designer Pauline van Dongen has created experimental athletics apparel from the same material that contraceptives brand Skyn uses to make its condoms.
Pauline Van Dongen’s proposal re-appropriates the company’s Skynfeel material, which is made from polyisoprene—an alternative to latex that is claimed to provide the same strength but with a more softer, more natural feel. It is used to create thinner condoms for increased sensitivity, and it is safe to be worn by those with latex allergies. Currently the only brand that makes polyisoprene condoms, Skyn let Van Dongen to take the material out of the bedroom and onto the running track. The result is the apparel jumpsuit, designed specifically for long-jumpers to help increase their aerodynamics and fly further through the air.
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“What struck me about the Skenfeel material is that it’s super-elastic, lightweight and strong all at once,” said the designer, who is known for her wearable tech projects that include garments that are with integrated solar panels and illuminated running gear. “No matter how you mold it or shape it, it’s going to feel great on your body,” she continued. “We asked ourselves, can we create an ultra-lightweight garment and mold it in a way that could help long jumpers perform better?”
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We custom made an experimental suit for long jumpers to explore the possibility that our material could actually improve an elite athlete’s performance. David Chaker Skyn Senior Global Brand Director
The flaps stay flat during the athlete’s run-up, then open up after take-off to provide an upward lift that could extend time in the air. The condom industry is continually trying to improve its products, simultaneously gunning for better stimulation and protection.
Recently, a Swedish sex toy company developed a sheath with a tear-resistant honeycomb surface, while a group of UK schoolchildren won an award for a conceptual design that would change color when in contact with a sexually transmitted infection.
Scientists are working on combining latex with wonder-material graphene to make condoms “more pleasurable”, while researchers at the University of Queensland have developed a new method of using fibers from grass to manufacture condoms that are “as thin as human hair”. In the world of competitive sports, athletes look for every advantage, We custom made an experimental suit for long jumpers to explore the possibility that our material could actually improve an elite athlete’s performance.” The suit features dragonfly wing-inspired flaps on the edge of the body, constructed from a thin layer of the condom material and reinforced by a geometric laser-cut grid.
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Top Tech Milestones In Recent Fashion History Photo: Courtesy of Iris Van Herpen
2010_ Printed Perfection Iris van Herpen unveils her first 3-D-printed designs, created in collaboration with London-based architect Daniel Widrig and printed by Materialise. Each piece from this first collection took approximately seven days of aroundthe-clock printing to make.
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Robot Fashion as performance art is exemplified to the max at Alexander McQueen’s Spring 1999 show, where the designer employs robots to spray-paint a dress worn by model Shalom Harlow in shades of black and yellow as she spins on a revolving platform.
Shape-Shifters Form meets function at Hussein Chalayan’s Spring 2007 show, as the designer uses microchips to reveal garments that mold and unfold by erasing seams to take on new forms and shapes at the end of the catwalk.
Photo: Marcio Madeira / firstVIEW
Photo: firstVIEW
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Photo: Inez and Vinoodh, Vogue, April 2015
Photo:Courtesy of Dior
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Head Games DVF goes geek-chic, sending Google Glass down the Spring 2013 runway and taking her finale walk wearing a pair alongside Google’s Sergey Brin.
Out of This World Entirely designed in-house, Dior experiments with the use of virtual reality, introducing Dior Eyes in select boutiques, which captures a 3-D world behind the scenes of its show.
Photo:Courtesy of Snapchat
Sanp Happy In a matter of seconds, Gucci gives a sneak peek of its Pre-Fall 2016 collection via Snapchat, leaving a lasting impression—no filter required.
2014_ Watch This Way Topshop introduces a virtual reality tour from its London flagship store with specially commissioned Oculus Rift 3-D headsets (the ones bought by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for $2 billion) that enable shoppers to see its catwalk in real time.
Photo: Courtesy of Topshop
2016_ The Drone Zone Drones hover high above Fendi’s Fall 2014 show. Turns out a Karl Lagerfeld furry monster charm looks cute and chic from every angle.
Photo: Steven Klein, Vogue, August 2015
Virtually Speaking Chromat’s Becca McCharen places VR glasses on every seat at her Fall 2016 show so guests can resee the collection at home again and again.
Photo: Alas Mert, Piggot Marcus
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DAVID PIERCE
The Jean Jacket Of The Future URBAN LIFE Most of the time, the fastest way to get anywhere in San Francisco is not Uber or Lyft or the ever-delayed Muni system, but on a bicycle. As long as you can handle the quadbusting hills and your reflexes are fast enough to dodge the occasional texting driver, there’s no better way to traverse the city.
It’s intended to look like a strap, but it’s more reminiscent of a security tag someone forgot to remove. The black tag contains a wireless radio, a battery, and a processor, but the most important tech in the Jacquard Jacket remains invisible. A section of the left cuff is woven with the special yarn, created by Ivan Poupyrev and a team of Google scientists, that turns the bottom of your arm into a touchscreen.
As GoBike cycle-sharing stands pop up all over the city, I’ve been riding more and more. I have this problem, When I first put on the jacket though: I don’t know how to get and snapped the detachable tag anywhere. All too often, I ride with one hand on the handlebars and the into place, it quickly paired to my iPhone through a dedicated other digging into my pocket, or Jacquard app. After a few holding my phone, as I try to figure seconds of setup, the app asked out my next turn. me to define a few gestures: And so when I tried on Google’s new What happens when you tap twice connected jacket, I instantly on the conductive yarn? What understood the appeal. The jacket— if you brush away from yourself, technically Levi’s Commuter Trucker or toward yourself? What Jacket with Jacquard by Google—is should it mean when the light on the result of a years-long the tag illuminates? partnership between Levi’s and Google to integrate a conductive, SMART TECHNOLOGY connected yarn into a garment. It’s I set mine to get me home. still early days, but the jacket A double-tap on my left arm now offers a glimpse into what might sends a ping to Google Maps happen when we start connecting and delivers the next turn on my our clothes to the Internet. navigation, either through the speaker on my phone or whatever headphones I’m wearing. If I swipe away, it reads out my ETA. The small motor in my jacket sleeve buzzes and the light comes on when I get a text or phone call.
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Urban commuters Urban commuters with the jacket of the future
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Navigate Stay focused on where you’re going.
Listen Stay in your groove. Play, pause, and skip.
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Communicate Handle calls and texts without handling your device.
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The Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google Abstract road
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Right now, the Jacquard Jacket doesn’t do much more than that. You can change tracks in your music with a swipe, or to count things like the miles you ride or the birds you see on your way home. The jacket was designed with bike commuters in mind, and the functionality follows suit. Levi’s VP of Innovation. Neither he nor Levi’s care about “wearables.” Instead, Dillinger wants to make this the perfect jacket for bicyclists: There’s a longer, buttcrack covering back; storm cuffs that keep out the whipping wind; and the connected gestures that make it easier and safer to change your music or get directions on the road.
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Of course, connectivity comes with some compromises. You’ll have to take off the tag and charge it via USB about every two weeks if you wear it just to commute, or every few days if you’re the all-denim-allday type. The left cuff is noticeably heavier and stiffer than the right, thanks to all the electronics inside. Also, PSA: You can’t wash the tag. On the plus side, if the battery dies, your jacket still does a good job being a jacket. For the most part, nobody would even notice the difference.
THE JACKET Tapping on your wrist won’t exactly revolutionize bike commuting. You can ride with your phone in your pocket and voice navigation on already, or with a handlebar navy gadget. But the Jacquard Jacket is just the beginning for this technology, which began as a project within Google’s research division to find a way to integrate conductive yarn into clothes without needing new equipment or processes. Google plans to work with many other companies on many other garments; Levi’s, which knows denim inside and out, made for an ideal first partner.
It’s still early days, but the jacket offers a glimpse into what might happen when we start connecting our clothes to the Internet.
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