For Amsterdam-based Dutch designer Antoine Peters making people smile has turned throughout the years into the main aim and objective of his design practice. Smiling affects the overall appearance of our faces, something that instantly changes us, making us look better.
This is the key to understand the inspiration behind Peters' latest creation, "The Lenticular Dress", developed for the Te[ch]x(t)iles project at the Museum Of The Image (MOTI), a leading authority on visual culture in Breda, Holland, that has been recently developing projects focused on art, film, design, photography and fashion.
The tunic dress is made with a fabric inspired by lenticular printing that features a special pattern. Once pleated the latter changes from dots into stripes and viceversa, depending on the viewer’s angle of perspective. The illusion of the multiple pattern dress is perfectly shown in Oscar Verpoort's film, while the technique behind it is explained in a mini-documentary by Marijke de Bie.
Though Peters is also a graphic artist, he didn't have in mind any specific art movements when he started working on a print that could play around with our pattern perceptions. "I like Op and Pop Art a lot and think typography is very important and can be very beautiful, but all the ingredients for the project came from the concept of having different looks or faces within one garment, and weren't derived from any artist," Peters told Irenebrination.
There were two difficult moments while making the dress, as Peters recounts. "The first one happened when I realised I had to go back to the basics, since developing a thin and drapery lenticular lense was too difficult for time and budget reasons. So I had to make a radical decision, and turn to basic techniques such as pleats to create the zooming out, zooming in and blow up impressions. The other hard moment was deciding about the silhouette and the graphic: I tried various silhouettes, including asymmetrical ones with differently coloured graphics and symbols that could retain a lot of information or provide a more intricate story for the viewer. But then it became too much, so I decided to leave it aside and find a new balance."
The Lenticular Dress could be considered as a behavioural garment since the wearer can move and show a different side of her dress and personality, while the dress also triggers a reaction in other people who meet the wearer and instantly respond with a smile of surprise.
Undermining the negativity surrounding us with a healthy dose of optimism is indeed the final aim of this design. "People - and fashion people in particular - are taking themselves too seriously," Peters says. "We may not be able to cure a disease with fashion, but fashion is still the most important among the unimportant things in life. It can indeed make you feel comfortable, beautiful or cool and influence yourself and the world around you. That's why I never wear black but always wear two different coloured socks: life is too short to be negative all the time, we should kick negativism in the ass!"
Antoine Peters' "Lenticular Dress" is at MOTI, Boschstraat 22, Breda, The Netherlands, until 30th January 2014.
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Member of the Boxxet Network of Blogs, Videos and Photos
Comments