Nowadays it often happens that an innovative technique that has been around for a while suddenly goes viral after it is presented in a visually or conceptually striking way on a runway. It is only then that the vast majority of people catch up and realize that it exists and start raving and ranting about it.
Fans of Kunihiko Morinaga's Anrealage collections do remember that the designer has been working for at least a decade on contrasts between lights and shadows, experimenting with his photosensitive fabrics and photonic-crystal fibers, consistently playing with light reactive textiles and designing intriguing garments that react in different ways according to the angle and intensity of the light hitting them, letting other colours or patterns appear.
In 2016 Morinaga applied these effects also to the uniforms of the staff at the Momentum Factory Orii, a traditional copperware colouring workshop, and introduced them also in Fendi's A/W 2020 menswear collection.
Anrealage's A/W 23 collection, showcased on Tuesday during Paris Fashion Week, moved once again from ultraviolet reactive fabrics and textiles with light-dependent color-changing photochromic properties, but it was presented with a new and even more innovative technology.
Models in similar but not identical white garments walked on stage, some wearing ensembles in which the back and front looked the same. UV-emitting tubes scanned the models from their heads to their feet while Ravel's "Boléro" played in the background.
The mesmerizing notes of Ravel creating a constant yet progressively grand crescendo were the perfect soundtrack to witness the magic: as the light passed in front of the garments, their colours changed. Bright and vivid shades, large polka-dot patterns and Anrealage's logo suddenly appeared.
Suits with boxy silhouettes, dresses with a '50s flair about them, trench and teddy coats mutated. The accessories – including furry wigs (or were those cloche hats?) and shoes (made in collaboration with Recouture) – also changed colour.
Compared to previous collections, this was the first time Morinaga integrated the technology into a variety of textiles, comprising faux fur, velvet, lace, knits, jacquards, satins and macramé.
Further textile interventions were carried on a crocheted cape matched with crocheted mitts and an allover lace jumpsuit that, from white became multi-coloured. The effect was also fun and called to mind those magic colouring books for kids in which, as soon as the pre-coloured drawing touches a drop of water, the white areas turn from boring white to brightly coloured.
The collection showed great progress when it came to colours, as the designer pushed photochromic technology to new levels: Morinaga's palette has definitely enriched, becoming more vibrant.
He is now able to produce shades of candy tones and pastels, pinks, yellows and blues and more vivid patterns, like the vertical and horizontal green stripes on a yellow dress.
The designs also revealed in their exaggerated volumes, conceptual tailoring (think two sets of lapels and what the designer called "front/front" or "back/back" constructions) and occasional sculpted silhouettes and proportions, Morinaga's pattern-cutting skills.
Through the collection, Morinaga explored the concept of Umwelt, a 19th-century concept developed by the German philosopher and biologist Jakob Johann Baron von Uexküll, indicating that the environmental factors are capable of affecting the behaviour of an animal or individual.
This is a reference to the fact that the colours of the garments will be different according to their environment: the reaction depends indeed from the particular weather conditions to which they are exposed.
So, under the sun in Rome you may get an effect, in London another and in Tokyo another one; and, obviously, colours will also be different under artificial light. This concept is interpreted by Morinaga as a celebration of diversity as well, we are indeed all one race, the designer highlighted in the collection press notes, but we see the world differently.
This constant metamorphosis refers to the influence of the environment on the wearer, but also to the perceptions of the single individuals.
While the metamorphoses in the show were powerful, they can be considered as the natural developments of other textile experiments occurred in the history of fashion.
A few years ago, designs made with photochromic material that altered their colours when exposed to UV light, were included in Alexander Wang's A/W 2014 collection, but there is a designer who pioneered the concept - Cinzia Ruggeri (we often mentioned her in connection with Anrealage's collections).
The Italian designer included in her Spring/Summer 1982 collection a black skirt suit with sections integrating liquid crystal serigraphic prints in primary colours that, when hit by the light gave the impression they were moving. "Inspired by the projection machine created by Piero Fogliati and pondering on the creative possibilities offered by the optical phenomenon, I designed this kinetic dress based on the principle of the decomposition of colors," Ruggeri stated at the time about this design (drawing on the left in the last image in this post).
She also came up with a design that featured a pattern made with liquid crystals graduated at a certain temperature. When the temperature changed, they reacted producing different colours.
"This design, which at first glance appears black, can change its appearance thanks to the liquid crystals applied on the textiles," Ruggeri explained in 1982.
"The liquid crystals assume bright colours thanks to the temperature. I designed this textile intervention so that the body could have a greater aesthetic responsibility in the creation of colours and embellishments. This technology (…) is destined to evolve in other sectors beyond fashion," she concluded.
The concept actually evolved in other industries as predicted: as the years passed, Ruggeri was indeed also contacted by Japanese companies that wanted to apply this technique to windsurf sails.
Ruggeri actually held a patent for this textile material that incorporated a composition of cholesteric liquid crystals, the colour of which varied on varying the temperature or the visual angle under which the surface was observed.
Morinaga has reached the completion of what Ruggeri wrote in the '80s, "A garment is a changing and ephemeral entity and passes on different messages when it is worn by different individuals."
In the case of Anrealage's new collection, the garments will also communicate something different in accordance with the light of the place where the wearer is moving.
So, this early '80s concept of garments that can mutate with light has transformed and mutated in our days, just like Morinaga's designs on Anrealage's stage.
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