Computerized motors pulled the strings at a recent Paris fashion show, dramatically altering dresses on the runway.
Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan is known for his innovative ideas. Earlier this month, he wowed the audience at his Paris runway show with five dresses that automatically transformed in shape and style. Zippers closed, cloth gathered, and hemlines rose--all without human assistance. Beneath each model's skirt was a computer system designed by the London-based engineering and concept-creation firm 2D3D. Rob Edkins, director of 2D3D, talked to Technology Review about how the computers controlled the clothing with motors and wires.
The underpinnings of one of the five transforming dresses featured in Hussein Chalayan's latest runway show. Wires within the tubes connect to motors at the bottom of the dress. The motors reel in wires attached to the outer layer of the garment, altering its shape. (Credit: 2D:3D)
Technology Review: What was your vision for the clothes in the latest Chalayan show?
Rob Edkins: He gave us a series of drawings: five dresses which morphed through three decades. Together with him we developed a means by which we could move the dresses into the various shapes of those three decades. It took a lot of R&D before we arrived at a solution.
With the first dress, the girl walked on in a 1906 costume, and it morphed from 1906 to 1916 and then to 1926. So she ended up having a beaded flapper dress of the twenties. The next dress was from 1926, and it evolved from 1936 to 1946, and so on. The final dress was 1986, 1996, and then 2007. So there were five dresses, and each dress [morphed through] three decades.
A lot of [the transformation] was unbelievably subtle. While you were watching something happen down around her waist, something else was happening on her shoulder. A little fabric might roll up and become a sort of half sleeve.
TR: One of the Chalayan dresses featured a rising hemline and a bustling of the skirt at the back. How did you make that dress transform?
RE: Basically, the dresses were driven electronically by controlled, geared motors. We made, for want of a better term, little bum pads for the models. So on their buttocks were some hard containers, and within these containers we had all the battery packs, controlling chips--the microcontrollers and microswitches--and little geared motors. The motors we used were tiny, about a third of the size of a pencil and nine millimeters in diameter. Each of the motors had a little pulley, and the pulley was then attached to this monofilament wire which was fed through hollow tubes sewn into the corset of the dress.
Some of the corsets were very complicated. They had 30 or 40 of these little tubes running everywhere, carrying these little cables, each doing its little job, lifting things up or releasing little linked metallic plates. There was a huge amount of stuff going on beneath the clothes.
here is digg to the runway show.
http://digg.com/design/models_in_clothes_from_the_future
I see a future where a virus can cause women's dresses, skirts, blouses, and hopefully underwear to drop in waves.
...and girl talk will be like "Did you download the latest security patches for your skirt's OS?"...
What a fantastic invention. At last a woman can wear an outfit to dinner and then transform it to something a lot sexier when she hits the dance floor.
On behalf of so very many guys out there who are sick of watching women trying to dance in their evening gowns, WELL DONE !
dLookDating.com.au
Something useful, but less ascetic
Rachel Ross’s article, “Transforming Clothing” highlighted the interesting concept of Turkish fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan, who created (using wires and electric motors) transformational clothing and debuted his new style in a Paris Fashion show this month. Even though I enjoy fashion, I would have liked the article to mention some practical applications which would be more advantageous to the general public, although less ascetically appealing. Possibly something like a therapeutic suit for patents with certain muscular conditions which could be adjusted dynamically to the patient’s needs, or even a dynamic eye catching store manikin to advertise the newest fall fashions.
www.techrd.com
Thank you
Brian Glassman
West Lafayette, Indiana
Innovation Management
Commercialization of technology
I find it unfortunate that such devices, which could be used for nobler purposes are being used to help women wear two outfits at the same time, to say nothing of the unimaginative ways that they were used (the zipper was nice, but the others could have been pushed farther). Hopefully this will expand the understanding of what tech-accessories are capable of, and used to help people who could really use it, children in need of prosthetics and so forth!
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plasticdoc
27 Comments
Model show
This is an anemic example of what designers have stooped to;showing malnourished models who are poor examples of what human populice is today;What makes them think these girls represent a normal population in any but a country which is starving for nutrition??The show was an absolute abomination of normalcy in America and Europe.They should be prosecuted for child abuse!!Not only was the show a flop,it had no real music or substance except in the distorted minds of those in the fashion industry.Where do they sell these abominations other than in the sick group who follows them??
Reply
BethJ
1 Comment
Re: Model show
Read the article. It's not about the models, it's about the technology used to make the clothes. And you'd also note that the clothes AREN'T for sale. They are like art pieces.
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gabrielg01
450 Comments
Re: Model show
Indeed, the article is not about the nourishment of the average population (which is grossly overweight by the way), neither about the skinny models. It's about technology - the music suggests that too, in case you don't get it.
I liked the dress with the embedded solar panels. Touch that girl and you get electrocuted, ha-ha-ha!:)
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