In yesterday's post we looked at how technological devices can enhance an accessory. Let's focus instead today on how technology can help a fashion archive.
In December last year, Andrew Kupresanin and Belinda Chen, founders of Super Bureau and of creative studio Superficial launched Virtual Fashion Archive.
The latter is a platform, an online space that, through 3D computer graphics, simulates the motion, volume and texture of a fashion design, giving archival garments a totally new life.
Virtual Fashion Archive seems to be the answer to a key issue many curators out there often have to face - how can visitors see a fashion design from different angles and get a sense of the dynamics behind that creation, when you display it in a museum environment?
Most fashion exhibitions allow us indeed to only appreciate one side of a garment, maybe the front or the back, and in very few cases we get a 360° view (and in some cases the designs are also located on scaffolding or stage-like structures that put more distance between the viewers and the object - exhibitions at London's V&A and New York's Met Museum's Costume Institute often opted for this solution, that is ideal to include a great number of designs, but leaves a lot to be desired if you're a fan of details).
The team behind the Virtual Fashion Archive started looking at three points - motion, interaction, and participation - and explored how to combine 3D computer graphics and simulation to study the garments from a structural point of view and see them in motion.
The initial collection currently on the Virtual Fashion Archive site gives a taste of what may come in future through four designs analysed with the support of The Museum at FIT.
Kupresanin and Chen picked from the museum archives Issey Miyake's "Pleats Please" dress (1996) that allows to look at pleating and graphic prints; Thierry Mugler's 1988 fuchsia jacket, a rigidly tailored construction created from a soft fabric that wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi film; Claire McCardell's ombré cotton dress (from 1945) with its sensual lines and bias cut bodice with multiple pleats at the side seams, and Issey Miyake's skirt suit from 1989 that features a jacket with striped wool panels and a full-circle skirt in which a clever folding technique creates a peculiar pattern.
The results of the virtualization process are fascinating as you can see close-ups of the seams, textiles and textures, volumes and patterns. The effects are particularly interesting when it comes to complex constructions like the ones in Miyake and Mugler's designs (seeing Miyake's skirt in a static picture on a mannequin, you wouldn't indeed realise it was created using a single piece of fabric with a series of innovative folds forming a complex configuration around it...).
Coming up with these images and animations wasn't easy as the garments had to be examined, measured and photographed in close detail and under different lighting conditions. Reverse engineered patterns were also reconstructed into digital doubles that closely mirrored the original using the garment creation software CLO.
There are still limitatios to this technique, but the future of these applications may be rich: students and fashion designers alike can visualise garments in archives located all over the world, but these virtualisations and simulations that add physical dynamics to a garment allowing it to come to life, could be used to enrich exhibitions and shows, encouraging visitor interaction, or they could be employed to show archival pieces that may not be on display because they are too fragile or delicate or awaiting restoration.
Hopefully, the Virtual Fashion Archive will be used to animate further culturally significant fashion objects from other museums as well. But, for the time being, you can keep updated following Superficial's Instagram page and discover other projects the studio developed such as its studies on virtual fabrics for the fashion platform Moda Operandi.
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