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created over 4 years ago | Tagged: |
2martens
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Fashion and technology are not usually mentioned in the same breath. However, two different innovators in the world of fashion have blurred the boundaries between performance, art, environment, and technology with their avant-garde endeavors. We're not talking couture lab coats (...yet), but we are talking magically disappearing dresses, skirts that double as furniture, and British models that are naked faster than you can say macromolecule.
Designer Hussein Chalayan is one person who has made these realms collide. A forward-thinking individual well beyond the prototypical fashion designer, his use of zany materials normally considered exclusive to non-fashion realms, is unrivaled. He's made a metamorphosing dress that serves as a lightning-fast chronicle of the evolution of fashion, condensing history in minutes with rising hemlines and varied silhouettes from prudish long Victorian to modern mini. Such shape-shifting feats have to be engineered by serious technicians: for his shows, he has employed no less than the peeps who did animatronics in a Harry Potter movie.
"green fashion" means something well-intentioned but ugly and made of hemp. Yet in the hands of Helen Storey, fashion provides a vehicle for environmental awareness without having to sacrifice creativity or aesthetic embellishment. Storey has created, among other endeavors, the Wonderland Project, in order to create awareness about the wastefulness of production. Partnering with Tony Ryan, a science professor at Sheffield, they drew from their respective backgrounds to create the ingenious disappearing dress.
Chalayan is not alone in mixing fashion and technology to push the envelope. London College of Design professor Helen Storey has blended fashion and technology in order to promote green change. Often, "green fashion" means something well-intentioned but ugly and made of hemp. Yet in the hands of Helen Storey, fashion provides a vehicle for environmental awareness without having to sacrifice creativity or aesthetic embellishment. Storey has created, among other endeavors, the Wonderland Project, in order to create awareness about the wastefulness of production. Partnering with Tony Ryan, a science professor at Sheffield, they drew from their respective backgrounds to create the ingenious disappearing dress.
