IN NEW YORK, TECH COMES OUT OF SCREENS AND ONTO THE RUNWAY
Vogue Business: In New York, tech comes out of screens and onto the runway
Designers and retailers embraced mixed reality, AI and the need for technology that is beautiful, fun and uncomplicated.
There’s an adage in storytelling to “show, don’t tell”. That’s especially true in fashion, where aesthetics are everything. So instead of smart contracts and crypto wallets, New York Fashion Week has moved on to tech that is — literally — easier to see.
Consider the final look from designer Christian Cowan: the silver shift dress?referenced louche 1960s glamour and the transportative nature of astrology; it also used liquid crystal “petals” and Adobe software to change the pattern on the bodice as the model walked through the historic ballroom of private social club The Harmonie Club. By bridging the gap between the familiar and the futuristic, Cowan showed how tech can be additive, rather than distracting.
“I wanted it to be something that didn’t look like a tech thing,” Cowan said after the Sunday night show, where?Syky creative director Nicola Formichetti?and musical artist Sam Smith were among the attendees. “I kind of cringe when fashion meets tech, and I can see where the optic cables and fibres are below the transparent fabric. I like it when it’s a seamless, gorgeous thing that you don’t know how it works.”
When?Adobe announced the technology, dubbed Project Primrose, in October, many on social media wondered how or if this latest iteration of smart textiles could blend in with fashion —?or if it would fall by the wayside, as previous pilots have done. The dress’s material (PDLC smart glass that can transition between transparent and frosted) can be programmed to change pattern, colour and style all while being worn, through generative AI that’s controlled by a button or in response to movement.
Cowan’s team reached out to Adobe after seeing the demo make waves on TikTok. “I was obsessed,” he says. “As a creative, you want to use all the tools at your disposal. And new technology is so exciting to use. Like, why would I not?”
At Collina Strada,?large-scale video installations of morphing animals?hovered over the runway, complementing Hillary Taymour’s theme of strength, while de-emphasising the fact that the content was created using generative artificial intelligence. “I’m a very visual person,” Taymour says. That’s why she loves using text-to-image generation tool Stable Diffusion, which she used on the videos, she says. (Last season, her entire collection was made by “remixing” and blending previous works, using AI.)
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