twenty1f: fashion for the 21st century

Digital technology isn’t just reserved for living room gadgets and computers. Your traditional folk costume can also be wired up — like the new lederhosen with built-in MP3 player premiered at this year’s CeBIT trade fair.

Nothing like an MP3 player built directly into your Lederhosen.

There’s nothing quite like sitting in a Munich beer garden on a sunny summer day sipping on a fresh liter of helles. The locals in their lederhosen at the next table complete the image of traditional rusticality. At least until their lederhosen start ringing.That’s right. One of the parting shots at the mega-tech convention CeBit in Hanover — which ended on Wednesday — was the presentation of traditional Bavarian leather pants with a built-in MP3 player, complete with cell phone reception. Instead of the traditional deer-antler buttons down the side, the digital lederhosen comes equipped with five buttons to control the mobile music maker. Digital traditionalists can also outfit themselves with a classic Bavarian jacket with MP3 control in the arm.

High-tech Bavarian folk costumes, though, aren’t that much of a stretch. Munich for years has been advertising itself as the home of both tradition and progress — Bavaria’s motto is “Laptop and Lederhosen” — and some beer gardens even offer wireless Internet connections.

The most recent lederhosen innovation comes as a result of a new brand, Tectile, which belongs to the traditional clothing manufacturer Lodenfrey. Other products in the collection include a GPS jacket and jackets with fully integrated anti-insect capabilities.

Not to be outdone, a number of other textile companies were also present at CeBIT this year, where a full 250 square meters were reserved for so-called “smart textiles.” Other innovative products included a cell-phone pouch that allegedly blocks “99.9999 percent” of radiation, and a spray intended to protect your skin from electromagnetic waves.

TAGS: fair, germany, gps, jacket, mp3 player, music, pants, tectile, tradition

posted by : regine on 23 Mar 2007

It’s a strange season for fashion. After a long post-minimalist, post-9/11 period of frills and sequins, where pretty was the only goal, the last couple of years have seen an explosion of experimentation. Suddenly dresses are belled and tuliped and bubbled - shape trumps embellishment and fashion writers increasingly use the word “architectural” as both descriptor and compliment. And architects often say that they’re inspired by fashion designers, who put out new work on a twice-yearly schedule that can seem like a kind of luxury when you’re mired in building codes and construction delays.

The timing couldn’t be better for Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture. Curated by Brooke Hodge, the Tsao and McKeowan-designed exhibit spiraled through MOCA’s Grand Avenue location, encompassing over 300 works from an international group of 46 avant-garde designers. The vast show, which closed earlier this month, was a conversation between the two disciplines, organized under topics like body, identity, shelter, geometry and tectonic strategies, which encompasses an arsenal of shared techniques like draping and folding. Despite the careful curation, it could be overwhelming. To see how the fashion designer/architect conversation played out live, we enlisted a young practitioner of each discipline to accompany us through the show.
Meet Rachel Allen, an architect who trained with Frank Gehry and now has an independent practice based in Los Angeles, and her friend, fashion designer Lori Schlachter, who has been designing her own successful line, Edward An, since she left Kate Spade.
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Rebellious duo Viktor and Rolf’s Russian Doll dresses are the first things you see. Arranged in a circle against a video projection of model Maggie Rizer being dressed in the gowns, they create a striking welcome to the show. The dresses, meant to be worn one on top of another, begin with a woven jute slipdress (not seen in picture) and layer on influence and structure until they are topped off, six pieces later, by an oversized jute cloak with a sculpted flower sprawling across its front. “That’s a building, right there,” says Allen, the architect, admiringly.
The next room features three spotlit Ralph Rucci gowns (photo background) in cream, black and forest green, that really make an argument for the dress as a structural creation (Vertebrae Infanta Gown).
“It looks like Proenza Schouler,” says Schlachter. “Or maybe I should say that they look like Ralph Rucci. It’s all that deconstructing and putting back.”

“It’s interesting,” replies Allen, “you talk about those dresses exactly the way modernists talk about buildings.”
“Well,” answers Schlachter, “the materials are all old, that sort of thinking is how we make them new.”
“It’s true,” replies Allen, “this is really all concrete and caveman labor.”
Many of the designers in this show – innovators like Issey Miyake, Martin Margiela, and Hussein Chalayan – doubtless read the same philosophers as their architect contemporaries, an amalgam of post-modern ideas on body and space that led to both a intellectualizing of fashion and a breaking down of classical architecture.
The Identity section shows architects playing with fashion and fashion designers playing with architecture. Pausing in front of Diller + Scofidio’s Bad Press: Dissident Ironing, white button-down shirts that are creatively ironed into a series of origami structures, Allen says, “it’s conceptual art by architects, though it feels kind of ‘80s now.” We pass J. Meejin Yoon’s Defensible Dress, a piece of medieval armor-meets-futuristic defense-meets-puffer fish contraption that expands aggressively when its sensors suss out a threat. Right now the whole display still feels like a show without the tell – we get the sense that Hodge, the curator, is preparing us, giving us a little easy-to-digest spectacle before launching into the connections.
The Identity section also features pieces from designer Hussein Chalayan’s Afterwords collection. Created in 2000, this grouping of furniture becomes both clothing and carrying case, so that you can conjoin shelter, travel, protection and style. Chalayan is the fashion philosopher who has the current generation of architects really paying attention. His 1998 collection, Between, which shows variation on the chador that leave the face veiled but the body naked, still feels prescient and timely.
We bypass the only architecture at the beginning of the show, not even noticing Jean Nouvel’s camera shutter-like building facade, a section of which is displayed here, from the Arab World Institute in Paris. But Shigeru Ban’s paper tube structures make us stop.
“He’s the first architect that we’re seeing, and it makes a lot of sense,” says Allen. “The structures are temporary, they’re made from fabric, they’re moveable.”
“You know, the building is like a body,” muses Schlachter. “It has a top and bottom, it has bones. In architecture you’re building the body – it seems like that’s the big difference.”
“I used to not care about color and material – architecture really stresses structure instead,” says Allen, “but now I am more aware of it, maybe because I’m more aware of fashion.”
Of course, fashion as a badge of identity has always mattered to architects, even if they’re trying to eschew the frivolous. “For a long time architects would only wear Issey Miyake and Comme de Garcons,” says Allen.
“Those architect glasses,” laughs Schlachter.
We moved onto Tess Giberson’s Structure 1, more an art installation than a piece of fashion design or architecture, that tries to join the two by means of a sort of deconstructible maypole that holds a series of outfits and itself becomes a yurt. Far less heavy handed is Isabel Toledo’s simple, beautiful Packing Dress. Created in 1988 by the cultish New York-based fashion designer – who last year took over as head of the conservative Anne Klein sportswear line, to the puzzlement of many fashion watchers – the circular dress is the show’s most graceful example of the parallels between the two disciplines.
Now the architectural models begin to appear, but in the midst of the resplendent gowns they feel inaccessible. In part it’s the show’s avoidance of heavy wall text. Usually that’s a good thing, but when even people used to peering at architectural models and renderings are bypassing them in favor of the dresses, it may be something to reconsider.
In a section labeled Process there are at-work photos of fashion designer Narciso Rodriguez, a New Yorker known for the body-flattering geometry of his dresses. In front of these sit early models of Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall, a project that Allen worked on while at Gehry’s office, and a video of the designs.
“The actual process was a lot messier,” says Allen. “Most offices don’t build models until they’re finished with a design, but Gehry does them as part of the design process, kind of like draping a dress on a mannequin.”
As the show begins to make a more overt case for the similarities in technique between fashion and architecture, connections start feeling more natural. In a section titled Structural Skin, photos of Toyo Ito’s Mikimoto Ginza and Rem Koolhas’s Seattle Public Library make the point that buildings sometimes don an outer layer, too. In a section on Constructing Volume, Schlachter notes that, “we’re seeing a lot of tulle and a lot of taffeta and duchesse satin because they hold their shape more, they’re materials that have inherent body and weight.” Then there are pieces like Junya Watanabe’s Techno Couture dresses – honeycombed outfits that turn the wearer into a walking play on form and volume.
Clothing and buildings both involve the construction of a three-dimensional shape using two-dimensional materials. This kinship is explored in the oversized Tectonic Strategies room, which has been separated in methods like folding, draping, pleating, printing and weaving.
“When you’re building models like these,” says Allen, looking at a Jakob + MacFarlane sinuous house, “all the methods are from fashion and car design, it’s more like pattern making.”
Schlachter is especially taken by this section, saying, “I love looking here,” at the pleated glass façade of architect Winka Dubbeldam’s Greenwich Street Project, “and then looking at that.” That, being one of designer Yoshiki Hishinuma airy, twisted confections.
One of the most beautiful pieces in the show is a copper and wood model of Herzog & de Meuron’s Central Signal Box, a utilitarian railway building in Basel that they sheathed in twisted copper strands. Behind that an entire roll of Issey Miyake’s pleated lightweight polyester, from his Pleats Please collection, hangs across the wall. It is a lovely juxtaposition, but a few intellectual leaps are required before the pairing feels like more than an astute aesthetic choice.
Looking at a photo of Shigeru Ban’s Curtain Wall house in Tokyo, Allen and Schlachter realize that they’ve been engaging in a fashion and architecture dialogue for months.
“That’s what we were trying to channel for your husband’s office,” exclaims Allen. (Schlachter’s husband is the co-founder of Buzznet, a content sharing site.) “Yes, they’re boys. We had a hard time convincing them on the curtain wall. It turned out to be kind of like designing a men’s collection.”

Via metropolisMag.

TAGS: architecture, conceptual, conversation, exhibition, MOCA

posted by : regine on 21 Mar 2007

Australian researchers have combined art and science to make dresses from fermented fabric, using bacteria to ‘grow’ slimy dresses from wine and beer.“We’re looking at [the dresses] to provoke some discussion about future fashions, about the possibility of other material we can use instead of our normal cottons and silks,” says Gary Cass, who works on the Micro’be’ project at the University of Western Australia.Cass is a laboratory technician at the university who, among other things, writes science fiction. He says he was inspired to grow the dresses when he was working in a vineyard many years ago. He noticed that when oxygen got into the vats and turned the wine into vinegar, a slimy, rubbery layer grew on top. This layer was cellulose, produced by acetobacter bacteria as a waste product when they convert wine into vinegar.

To ferment fabrics, Cass and his colleagues deliberately let vats of wine go off to produce cellulose. And to get the shape of a dress, they lifted the layers of slimy cellulose off and laid them over a deflatable doll. After each dress was complete, they deflated the doll and removed it, leaving the dress intact.

“It’s the bacteria that are weaving all these fibres together,” says Cass. “We’re not using any machines, sewing machines and so forth.”

The dress shown is made from red wine and is made in the style of a cavewoman’s dress. The model is also made up to look like a cavewoman and is supposed to be emerging from a primordial swamp, says Cass.

“It’s a great narrative to talk about the evolution of a new garment,” he says.

Cass says other alcoholic drinks can be used to ferment fabrics. “As long as we have alcohol, these bacteria will do their job,” he says, adding that one dresses has a clear panel made from beer.

But the dresses have to be kept wet, says Cass. Once they dry they become like tissue paper and can easily tear if the fabric is too thin. This is because the cellulose fibres the bacteria produce are short, unlike cotton ones, which are easily spun into longer fibres. The next step is for the team to collaborate with an organic chemist to find a way to polymerise the cellulose fibres. This would produce longer fibres so the researchers can grow more-wearable fabrics.

The dresses are made from pieces of cellulose joined together. But Cass hopes one day the team can make the bacteria ferment seamless garments.

TAGS: alcohol, bacteria, bugs, cellulose fibres, ferment, materials, smell, wine

posted by : regine on 19 Mar 2007

Philips hopes that fitting-room fiascos will become a thing of the past if it ever forays into the world of fashion. The consumer electronics giant has come up with a way to change the size, shape and style of clothes by weaving “muscle wires” into the fabric. The wires are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them.

Here’s the idea: you try on a special pair of Philips’ trousers, and connect up to a power source that changes the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width.

Then simply disconnect to try the trousers in exactly your size. Philips says the technique could also be used to correctly fit shirts, socks and bras, or indeed any other article of clothing.

Read the full auto-snug patent application.

TAGS: fabric, fit, fitting, muscle, philips, shape-memory, wire

posted by : regine on 19 Mar 2007

Photo © Ian Ritchie

20 March 2007

The first in a series of seminars and workshops asks “What is the Future For Textiles?”. Fashion designer Katherine Hamnett, Martin Raymond, founder of The Future Laboratory, architect Ian Ritchie, textiles author and curator Sarah E. Braddock Clarke and interaction & textile designer Rachel Wingfield will be in the hot seat to respond, chaired by Dr Jane Harris, Director of the Textile Futures Research Group and Group Members.

Textile design and production have played a pivotal role in economic, social, educational and cultural development worldwide. It is a key global industry. World changes in political power, economic balance and cultural values demand a reshaping of the design, production and uses of textiles, how we define them, and how we educate those who create and consume them whether scientists, technologists, engineers, designers or makers. This together with the velocity of scientific developments (in the digital, nano, material etc. domains) requires designers, makers and academics to develop new research relationships and methods to realise the potential of textiles’ aesthetics, production, function, application and cultural capital.

The Textile Futures Research Group comprises researchers across Chelsea College of Art and Design, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London College of Fashion, at the University of the Arts London. The remit of the Unit will be to undertake a clearly focused range of textile related research that facilitates technology translation and convergence, improving the interface between science and design, the exploration of sustainability, the expansion of the textile product applications for, and the redefinition of cultural and aesthetic norms.

Speakers

Ian Ritchie is the founder of Ian Ritchie Architects in London, and co-founder of the special design engineering firm Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR) in Paris. His interventions throughout the 1980s explored fabric and tensile structures, light transmitting fabrics, high performance glass systems, robotics and light memory coatings. Ian Ritchie’s firm continues to be one of Europe’s leading innovative design engineering companies.

In 1981 Ian Ritchie established Ian Ritchie Architects in London, and co-founded the special design engineering firm Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR) in Paris. Ritchie’s first building, the Fluy House was completed in 1978, and since leaving RFR several projects have been completed internationally by Ian Ritchie Architects including the Albert Cultural Centre; Boves Pharmacy; Daours École Primaire; Terrasson Cultural Greenhouse; Ecology Gallery, Natural History Museum, London; and the Louvre Pyramids and Sculpture Courts.

www.ianritchiearchitects.co.uk

Katharine Hamnett is a prolific fashion designer, acclaimed for the past four decades, her latter works call attention to the processes of textile production and interrogates their detrimental effects on both environment and ethical labour standards.

Hamnett’s collections can be seen as interventions. In 2003 her Autumn Winter Womenswear collection was shown at London Fashion Week, the Stop the War T shirts featured on the catwalk, this resulted in UK and International newspaper coverage including front pages worldwide. Andy Birkin from The Stop the War Coalition commented that this tee instigated the 30,000,000 person demonstration that took place the following year.

Hamnett was invited by OXFAM to visit African cotton farmers in Mali. Hamnett met with African farmers and visited government officials to highlight the plight of the cotton farmers due to western cotton subsidies before the Cancun trade conference, photographs and interviews appeared in key UK and International Newspapers and Television Worldwide.

In July 2004, Hamnett auctioned her anti-war ‘Not in my name’ t-shirt online with i-D. In October the same year, a photograph of Jodie Kidd wearing Hamnett’s ‘Stop war Blair out’ t-shirt was exhibited at the Imperial War Museum. This year Hamnett also launched the organic cotton campaign to raise awareness of the issues again to the world’s press.

In 2005, Katharine Hamnett designed and sourced manufacturing for 12,000 organic cotton t-shirts for the Oxfam ‘Make Poverty History’ / G8 summit campaign.

In 2006 the new Katharine E Hamnett collection for menswear and womenswear was launched - ‘E’ stands for production that is as environmentally and ethically sound as possible. These collections use organically grown cottons and wools, and were shown in London and Paris for summer 07.

www.katharinehamnett.com

Martin Raymond is the Co-founder and Futures Director at the Future Laboratory. He edits Viewpoint magazine and is also author of The Tomorrow People: Future consumers and how to read them today (Financial Times Prentice Hall). He is also a regular contributor on trends and business to the BBC.

Born in 1961 in Ireland, Martin Raymond moved to the UK in 1984 to work as a journalist in the design, fashion, film and video sectors. He founded VideoGraphic, and later became an associate editor at Screen International. Martin went on to edit and re-launch Fashion Weekly, the UK’s fashion business bible. A return to his native Dublin to present RTE television’s fashion magazine programme Head To Toe was followed by a four-year tenure at the London College of Fashion, as senior lecturer in fashion journalism. A Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, he maintains a busy schedule of lecturing at over 12 colleges and universities throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Martin is currently working on his second book, The Hidden Life of the Consumer, which takes an ethnographic look at how and why people shop and how brands and retailers can plug into process in a way that benefits consumers as well as the organisations targeting them.

Raymond is the Futures Director at The Future Labaratory which was established in November 2001. It is recognised for its innovative approach to forecasting,using ethnographic research tools and a creative, qualitative outlook to help programmers, brands, retailers, designers and marketing departments gain better insights into market directions and the future products or brands consumers may need.It also offers lifestyle analysis,brand development and consumer network building. The Future Laboratory aims to provide inspirational,thought-provoking presentations which will ignite,invigorate and provoke debate.

www.thefuturelaboratory.com

Sarah E. Braddock Clarke is a writer, curator and lecturer. She is co-author of Techno Textiles, SportsTech and Techno Textiles. She is a freelance writer, curator and lecturer whose main focus is new materials and their applications to fashion and art. Her books (co-author with Marie O’Mahony) include Techno Textiles (1998), SportsTech (2002) and Techno Textiles 2 (2005), all published by Thames & Hudson.

Exhibitions Braddock-Clarke has co-curated (with Marie O’Mahony) include Fabric of Fashion for the British Council, a touring exhibition (2000-2002), Edge: The Influence of Sportswear for Oksnehallen, Copenhagen (2002) and Future Textiles: Fast Wear for Sport and Fashion for the HUB, UK (2005).

Rachel Wingfield is currently a Research Fellow and Lecturer on the MA Textile Futures course at Central Saint Martins, School of Fashion and Textiles. She is also co-founder of the design research studio Loop.pH.

Loop.pH specialise in the design and research of responsive textiles & structures for the built environment. It is a multidisciplinary partnership set up in 2002 by Rachel Wingfield with artist Mathias Gmachl. Their skills include the design, construction and fabrication of structural and responsive textiles. They conduct an extensive range of research activities and collaborate with industry. Together they have fabricated reactive surfaces for a variety of environments, from the public to the domestic. Their work aims to provide a more intuitive understanding of our natural environment and mediates between craft, technology and nature.

www.loop.ph

TAGS: london, salon, seminar, textiles

posted by : regine on 13 Mar 2007

Tal Drori commented on the Muttering Hats by pointing to a brilliant goofy project of hers. I didn’t feel like leaving it in web limbo.When the ears of the Coniglio Hat (coniglio means “rabbit” in italian) are pointed up, the sound of the music player is turned off; manifesting the user’s attentiveness and availability to communicate. When the ears are folded down, the music automatically turns on, their position indicates listening mode.

Other project by Tal Drori: Fashion Victims and Mass Distraction.

TAGS: communication, fun, hat, music player, rabbit, sound

posted by : regine on 10 Mar 2007

One of those elegant masks by Spanish designer Carlos Diez*. In the meantime i’m sporting one of his cute face accessory.

The collection.
Via Las insolitas aventuras del pez and Centro moda online.

TAGS: catwalk, fur, mask, spain

posted by : regine on 10 Mar 2007

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The condition of today’s modern individual, is on the go; traveling from city to city, long office hours and even longer commute times. Most of our time is spent in a series of temporary spaces, none of which are home. Wearable space allows the user to travel with their own space, creating at least one constant in an urban existence, that is comprised solely of erratic events. This piece is wearable, easily deployable and can be customized for each individual user’s size, needs and tastes. it is the ability to create personal space, not to seek it.

The form is made from a series of hexagons and pentagons fused together to create the surface. This system allows for a structure to grow infinitely in all directions. Allowing for a potential community of connected inflatable pods to grow.