What Do You Get When You Cross a Dress With a Motherboard?

Fashion is extremely slow to change. Trends and seasons pass quicker than expected, but fundamental changes to presentation or manufacturing are rare. And, if innovation does come along, the industry often gets very confused about how to embrace it.

We started our most recent Naked Innovation session by looking at some exceptions to the norm, namely Alexander McQueen showing a holographic Kate Moss dramatically wafting about his A/W 2006 show – an idea that was recycled to great effect by Burberry for their 2011 show in Beijing.

Moving beyond virtual, Hussein Chalayan’s S/S 2007 servo-laden morphing dresses combined presentation and material innovation.

But it’s rarely as spectacular as that – innovation usually targets a very specific function and audience, and few people have emotional reactions to Nike’s DriFit.

Aimed more at enhancing self expression are “smart fabrics” developed by Sefar, or at ETH Zurich – and it is these that have designers at a loss.

The problem is that light-up or colour-changing clothes are nothing conceptually new – they are essentially no different from clipping a light to a jacket. The technological principle remains stuck in limbo while waiting for a sensible application.

Then there is, of course, the use of 3D-printing – but both Marloes ten Bhömer’s printed shoes and Iris van Herpen’s runway dresses feel rather like experimentation with a tech trend.

On that note, the session concluded with a look at the communication of fashion. Jumping onto the Oculus Rift bandwagon, Topshop recently gave five customers the opportunity to follow the runway show from a virtual front row seat.

But it is once again Burberry who take the most convincing stab at in-store tech, outfitting their entire Knightsbridge store with NFC-triggered virtual mirrors displaying collateral information to clothes and accessories.

Johannes Meyer
Strategy Intern UK
@seethingkittens

Image via Andrew Nourse, Flickr. Creative Commons CC BY 2.0.