They are seeking to transform our idea of what fashion actually looks like, forging a whole new aesthetic world as they go
The Kaikoku floating dress by Hussein Chalayan from autumn/winter 2011/12 features a gold shell and spring-loaded Swarovski crystals London’s Cute Circuit, a self-styled techno atelier dedicated to wearable technology covering everything from light-adorned dresses to interactive designs on which you can feature your own tweets. Not one to be left behind when it comes to innovation, Hussein Chalayan has also been pushing the boundaries, delivering for SS16 his “transforming dresses.” As his final models hit the runway, his soluble designs disappeared in a shower of water to reveal entirely different gowns underneath.
For some designers, using technology to construct more intricate versions of what came before isn’t enough. Instead, they are seeking to transform our idea of what fashion actually looks like, forging a whole new aesthetic world as they go. It’s certainly the case for Iris van Herpen, the Dutch designer and “3D couturier” generally considered to be at the forefront of all this, with several looks featured in the Met’s coming exhibition. “I always mix traditional craftsmanship and new technologies so that I can go far beyond the possibilities of using just one medium,” she explains. “The huge amount of detail that is in the dresses we make here is only possible because of this. By combining the best of all worlds, I have created an atelier that pushes the boundaries of what a garment can be—and pushes the idea of what fashion can be.”
What that looks like is quite simply extraordinary. Van Herpen’s creations can come 3D-printed or crafted out of “handgrown” fabrics moulded from magnets; they require hours of hand-stitching and silicone moulding, creating feather-strewn dresses and skeletal forms that are a complete departure from anything seen before. “The selection of my work that will be shown in the Metropolitan Museum shows really strongly the variation of techniques I have been developing, from traditional craft to 3D printing, laser cutting, moulding, and magnetically ‘hand-grown’ structures,” the designer says. “Because technology is always evolving, I’m able to design new aesthetics each time. For my Lucid collection, we made a dress that is 3D-printed from 5,000 individual pieces, which are then all hand-stitched to a soft tulle to create maximum movement and flexibility. When you look close up at a 3D print, you see thousands of little lines. It is like looking at the process, like the life circles of a tree.”
As these advances gather pace, it’s not only the avant-garde like Van Herpen who are realising possibilities. At Chanel, in an appropriately themed “casino” collection for his most recent couture show, Karl Lagerfeld made one of the biggest gambles of his professional career by adopting that same technique of 3D printing and applying it to nothing less than Coco Chanel’s iconic skirt suit. He told reporters backstage that the idea was to “take the most iconic jacket of the 20th century and make a 21st-century version, which technically was unimaginable in the period when it was born.” He used a method called selective laser sintering, creating 3D fabrics that Lagerfeld then lined with silk, treated with sequins and finished with Chanel’s signature braiding.
That Chanel suit will now hold pride of place in the Met’s exhibition, signifying the merging of the technological with the traditional. They may seem like funny pairings, but this is where fashion is heading— and given the powers these new techniques bring, it’s a good place to go, according to Van Herpen. “Combining craftsmanship with the latest technology is a way to optimise beauty and intricacy. To me, a 3D-printing machine or a laser cutter is the same as a needle and a thread. They are all tools in my toolbox.”
As Lagerfeld so succinctly put it after revealing Chanel mark two to the world: “What keeps couture alive is to move with the times. If it stays like Sleeping Beauty in the woods in an ivory tower, you can forget it. The women who buy couture today are not the bourgeoisie of the past; they are young, modern women.” It is perhaps entirely fitting, then, that the fashion they are being offered is made now in the most modern of ways. Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, 5 May to 14 August, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York