Valérie Lamontagne

After the recent Bangladesh’s garment factory building collapse, it seems an urgent time to rethink fast-fashion production and consumption. Kate Fletcher, author, educator, and pioneer in the field of sustainable fashion, in her recent book “Fashion & Sustainability: Design for Change” charts the ways in which the landscape of fashion production, consumption and use could be re-tooled with the aims to improving both sustainable uses of materials, and better social and economic livelihood of those involved in the making of our garments. Her book covers a number of avenues to asses the current modalities of fashion making and buying, as well as proposals (and limitations) on how our habits as designers and consumers could factor in more socially and environmentally sound practices.

BACKGROUND

Q: What is your background?

Textiles and design for sustainability.

Q: What led to your interest in fashion & sustainability? Was there an “ah-ha” moment that told you “now” was the time to get involved in having a voice in this issue?

I’ve always loved clothes… and made many of them as a young woman and I’m from a family of community activists – pairing fashion with working for the common good is in my blood.

Q: How do you conduct your research? Do you engage in field work and conduct interviews, and how do these encounters shape your vision?

I use many different research methods: some are drawn from design process others methods like ethnography. My most recent research project uses ethnographic methods: object histories and photography to explore social practice.

Q: What was the most ecologically inspiring place you ever visited?

I am awe struck over and again in Nature. Though turning over my compost heap is both intellectually and physically a work of complete connectedness with natural systems.

Q: At present, what is the most problematic (environmentally and socially) place in the world where fashion is being produced, and why?

Every place has challenges and positive aspects.

1. FASHION PRODUCTS

Magenta Dress by Bird Textiles

MATERIALS

Q: What materials should we be harnessing as consumers or designers to improve fashion’s toxic carbon footprints? There are many different classes of fibers described in your book: renewable fibers, biodegradable fibers, people-friendly fibers, low-chemical-use fibers, low-energy-use fibers, low-water-use fibers, predator-friendly fibers, can you quickly explain the difference, or propose the most ideal type of fiber we should be aiming for?

The ideal type is the one that best suits the purpose of your design intention.

Low to No Waste Jacket by Sam Forno

PROCESSES

Q: Much of the fibers that we use are subject to many kinds of chemical and rely heavily on water processes, which are quite corrosive to the environment. Can you describe some of the more toxic procedures (i.e. chemical bleaching and dying) so that our readers are more aware of them and explain why these processes are being used in the first place?

No fibre has ever been transformed from natural or synthetic polymer into a state that we would want to wear without substantial investment of resources. The processing of fibres variously draws down water, consumes energy and involves process chemicals… but to not subject fibre to these processes would make it unfit for purpose. And of course the environmental value of any product (including a ‘green’ product) is only realized upon its use. If it is not worn even if has a low energy intensity, resources are wasted.

Q: I was excited to read about the “minimum waste” initiatives of some designers. Can you explain what this is, and the important role that “waste” plays in tackling the betterment of fashion production?

Cutting waste is an important way to influence the resourcefulness of fashion. Some designers are using their pattern cutting skills to minimize cut loss as a garment is cut out and use every scrap of a fabric width – from selvedge to selvedge – in a garment’s design. This is leading to interesting new silhouettes and a visible response to sustainability concerns.

Q: Hardware, such as zippers, buttons, snaps etc. as well as all other non-textile add-ons to fashion (beads, plastic piping etc.) can really minimize the materials potential for re-use. What should we be doing about this? Wearing only draw-string pants with no hardware??

I think novel ways of holding garments on the body are important: and offer a potential source of innovation for designers looking to develop new ways to foster change.

Dress by MATERIALBYPRODUCT

DISTRIBUTION

Q: What is the best way to carbon offset our fashion consumption? Buying online? Locally? Second hand? Making our own? Sometimes the choice is not as clear as it seems!

Best way to offset: to not buy.

Bodice Dress by Goodone

DISPOSAL

Q: Is the best solution to minimize waste, other than, of course, buying less?

Disposal and production are two sides of the same coin: it is impossible to look at one without the other.

Q: What do you think of e-textiles and smart fashion? How can we move forward technologically in fashion, without risking not being, for example, able to recycle textiles because of embedded circuits, batteries, and heavy metals?

I think such technologies have potential; but I would ask who is benefiting from them? If it’s people – citizens – then I’m interested. If it’s commercial interests over people, then I would want to ask many more questions.

2. FASHION SYSTEMS

Modular Dress Galya Rosenfeld

ADAPTABILITY

Q: What are some of the exciting modular-based systems in fashion that could be game changers? Do you have some of these in your wardrobe?

For me the most exciting ones are the pieces that help you develop skills to see the world differently.

Konaka Shower Clean Suit

OPTIMIZED LIFETIMES

Q: How can we optimize the lifetimes of garments? Is it more about quality, habits, or emotional attachment? What are some of the strategies that have best embodied this slowing down of consumption?

A combination!

Downloadable Pattern Jacket by SANS

LOW-IMPACT USE

Q: What is low-impact use design? I.e. low-no-launder, stain-welcoming, pro-wrinkle clothes. And why would we want it?

We’d want it because it’s easier. Such pieces shine a light on the lunacy of our unconscious unnecessary habitual behaviours around garment laundering that have been fostered by, among others, the detergent industry.

Reworked Trench by Junky Styling

LOCAL

Q: If the local is the new chic in gastronomy, how can make it so also in fashion? What are some good examples of local uses of materials and practices that could inspire the reader to make a difference at home?

Local designers fostering local skills and employment have an extremely positive impact. Search them out in your vicinity.

BIOMIMICRY

Q: What can we learn from nature in the process of re-thinking uses of natural resources?

Everything. Don’t pollute your nest. Don’t commute to work. Everything is a resource.

One Night Stands Disposable Shoes by Stephanie Sandstrom

SPEED

Q: In your book you advocate for both new forms of slow and fast fashion, so clearly the solution is not only in pushing the deceleration button. Can we have our fast fashion fix and still be eco-minded? And how?

With a pursuit of quality made possible through the development of an industry not only predicated on selling more…

Slow-Knitted Sweater by Marie Ilse Bourlanges

Q: What do you think of rapid prototyping and 3D printing? On the one hand, we can produce less and more locally which is good for the environment in terms of long-haul transportation of goods. On the other hand, 3D printing is mostly being done with plastic and chemical substrates that are not at present recyclable. And on the last hand (if we had 3 :)), is rapid prototyping just going to encourage more cheap, fast, and disposable production schemes?

I am all for a hybrid approach that recognizes the value of different processes for different contexts. We have become horribly reductionist in our thinking and prefer simple one-size-fits-all solutions. But fashion is not a one size fits all industry. We need a different approach. We need a more diverse approach.

Designs by Antiform Industries

ENGAGED

Q: What is “fashion hacking” and how can it empower us?

One of the mantras I try to live by is that gleaned from hacking: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. By this token if you want to truly engage with something and properly ‘own’ it you need to understand how it’s put together and how you could ‘mod’ it to improve it. It’s a shift in power away from the factory to the home.

Hacking Fashion Workshops by Otto von Busch

FASHION DESIGN PRACTICES

Q: If there was one place from which we could begin to make a change as simple consumers, or as fashion designers, where and what would that be?

In our minds.

London-Montreal, May 2013

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ANOUK WIPPRECHT [NL] + ADUEN DARRIBA [ES] “SMOKE DRESS” (2012)



Recently developed as part of a TECHNOSENSUAL Artist-in-Residency at MQ, the “SMOKE DRESS” is a collaboration between fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht and technologist Aduen Darriba. The dress is a tangible couture “smoke screen” imbued with the ability to suddenly visually obliterate itself through the excretion of a cloud of smoke. Ambient clouds of smoke are created when the dress detects a visitor approaching, thus camouflaging itself within it’s own materiality. The “SMOKE DRESS,” with its loose net of metallic threads and electrical wire, works at the scale of the magical illusionists trick, permitting a hypothetical magician’s assistant to perform her own disappearing act!

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ANOUK WIPPRECHT [NL] “PSEUDOMORPHS” (2010)



“PSEUDOMORPHS,” developed as part of the Summer Sessions at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam (2010), aims to be a “self painting dress.” With a built-in valve system, and several containers of purple liquid, the dress can be activated by the wearer (or viewer) in order to “stain” itself, thus bleeding a permanent colour stain onto it’s pristine white felt structure. Occurring as an irrevocable event, with the resulting dress forever carrying the mark of its “stain”—much in the same manner in which we carry our physical wounds or scars—the dress captures an unforgettable, and unique moment in time, something rare in the mass-produced landscape of fast fashion. Interestingly, the idea of the dress was “borrowed” by Britney Spear’s stylist for her hyperbolic 2011 video “Would You Hold it Against Me.”



Q: What is your background?
I am an artist / designer, curator and lecturer from the Netherlands. Coming from a fashion design (couture/tailoring) & communication background (Netherlands 2000-2010) I started to occupy my agenda with interaction design classes and user experience courses during 2007 as a side study (Netherlands + Sweden) and graduated on both topics in 2010. At that time I freaked out with micro-controllers, tube systems, servo’s, sensors and mechanics in every spare hour I had left.

Q: What led you to your being involved in fashion and technology?

Regular fashion design bored me, and my interest in robotics and artificial intelligence went up, so I started to combine it; creating interactive creatures and ‘animating’ my designs. The body is a gorgeous platform for explorations of all kinds. By combining fashion with technology, a lot of unexplored territory opened up for me, and I finally could create the things that spinned my head.

Q: What kinds of materials and technologies are used and integrated into your designs? 
Could you describe the process / challenges / advantages of using these particular materials in fashion and garments?
I like to work with unusual and uncontrolled materials like fluids, smoke, inks, nano particles and foils to create effects around the body.

 I prefer the word ‘organic’ over everything else and am interested in mimicking nature’s charming tricks next to working with sensitive and experimental high tech technologies rather than overdeveloped products.

While creating in the realms of fashiontech, I often collaborate with fellow artists, engineers, scientists, designers, universities and innovative companies to research new areas where expertise can be combined. This is a major advantage, especially when there is a good ‘flow’ in a team, this makes a project really magical. Challenges come and go, some more evil than others, but without them there is no space for innovation.

I am working at this moment close together with Viennese software engineer and hacker Daniel Schatzmayr on a series of robotic dresses for a stage setting and there are always a lot of problems that occur; from design complications to technical disturbances, ‘how to power’ your design, making low weight and practical wiring / storage settings, agreeing upon interaction, and creating a comfortable user interface situation for the wearer. Next to last minute short circuits crisis, late night coding and system fails; during showcases, you often get a design to perform correctly after some tweaks in the last 5 minutes. You can basically just wait for that to happen. I think that challenges come and go, some more evil than others, but without them there is no space for innovation nor exploration.

Q: What does technology add to fashion?
Technology combined with fashion creates new ways of communication between people, a new relationship between interface and the body, and a new connection of the body with technology. For me it is a playful exploration, where the body is the platform of interaction and expression.

 The position that technology has in our society (i.e. to ‘please’ us) will get more and more intimate, and as technology crawls closer to the skin we will need to start to rethink and recreate the relation that we have towards technology. In a way, communication-wise, techno enhanced fashion has the potential to mediate a human in more ways than a human can mediate itself. Therefore, amongst other reasons, I am interested in how emotional, social and psychological processes can be influenced using electronics as an extension of the self.

Intimacy 2.0 Interactive fashion by Studio Roosegaarde from Daan Roosegaarde on Vimeo.

Q: If you could have anyone alive or dead wearing your fashion-tech design, whom would you pick, and where would they be?

Mostly a Scandinavian-look ash blonde model with a milky skin color. Any persona that gives the notion of a blank canvas for me, in where electronics or technology can be the source. Minimum expression, as the tech-enhanced parts should do the ‘work’ (interaction/expression/communication). Leaving the persona just to ‘be”.

Q: How do you envision the everyday fashion-tech of the future?

We will establish new connections – both with the garments around us, as with the space surrounding us.

Q: What do you think is the importance of the TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition?

The importance of the TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition for me, personally, is to inspire people and to give a glance of possibilities that occur when fashion and technology are combined. This way I hope to stimulate more designers, engineers and scientists to take a step in areas that might be unknown to them. We want to involve visitors in projects that are out in the world but stayed hidden in design and research studio’s; some of the designs in the TECHNOSENSUAL exhibition people might know from books or blogs, but have never been displayed before. As we live in a society that makes 3D models out of merely everything, the promised interaction of these mediated projects could also be hoaxes.

At TECHNOSENSUAL the visitors get an overwhelming amount of animated, responsive, and interactive designs that they can experience first hand. While the exhibition’s side program is created to stimulate the production of new works due to its Artist-in-Residency program and accompanying framework of workshops and symposiums, giving artists and audience the chance to explore new fields and practices. The exhibition brings designers, engineers and scientists closer together within the realms of fashion and technology, while also functioning as a platform for innovation.

Q: The TECHNOSENSUAL catalogue is now in full production. What will we see and discover in it that we didn’t see in the exhibition? Where will we be able to get our hands on a copy?
The catalogue gives a little sneak-peak behind the whole project; it features interviews and behind the scenes pictures with the TECHNOSENSUAL Artists-in-Residency’s, project descriptions and background information on the exhibition concept and design. It’s an 120 pages catalogue that is in production at this moment, to be released at the beginning of December. The catalogue will be in a selection of stores in Vienna and can be purchased through the internet. Keep an eye on the TECHNOSENSUAL website at the beginning of December 2012.

Credits: Photographer: Robert Lunak
Vienna, November 2012

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MIKA SATOMI [JP/SE] + HANNAH PERNER-WILSON [AT/USA] “THE CRYING DRESS” (2012)



When we think of wearables, we tend to associate futuristic streamlined shapes, innovative and synthetic materials, and sports or body enhancing technologies. Rarely do we envision the poetry of the combination of craft and narrative to bring wearable technologies alive, and emotionally vibrant. Kobakant’s recent project, “The Crying Dress,” is made for a speculative future where crafts are highly valued, and widows are bequest dresses which may cry for them. The design is Kobakant’s first foray into fashion, where previous projects saw them honing their craft and DIY e-textile skills. It is interesting to note how Kobakant foregrounds the importance of context, story telling, and of imaginative expectations of the future of wearables which are incumbent on the re-valuing of hand-skills over the machine made. “The Crying Dress” is exquisitely poignant and melancholic, suitable for a distant future that is sure to reawakens the past.

Q: What is your background?
Mika: Media Art, Graphic Design
Hannah: Industrial Design, Media Arts and Sciences

Q: What led you to your being involved in fashion and technology?
M: We used conductive fabric for our first collaborative project “Massage Me”, and we got hooked with the material property of the E-textiles.
H: Yes, the materiality of E-textiles got us hooked on electronics. “The Crying Dress” is our first real fashion project and we really enjoyed combining E-textiles with fashion as a medium to tell a story using visual aesthetics and the craftsmanship of the work, as well as the functionality and materiality of the electronics.



Q: What kinds of materials and technologies are used and integrated into your designs? Could you describe the process / challenges / advantages of using these particular materials in fashion and garments?

M & H: First of all, our projects are not necessary focusing on fashion or garments. The use of conductive textile materials in electronics brings us interesting ways to understand technologies instead of leaving them in a black box. Also incorporating textile techniques, such as embroidery, in the production of electronic objects gives us different ideas of time and skills involved in makings.

Q: What does technology add to fashion?

M: I do not have a particular answer to this question. I feel that it is similar to asking “what does Hat adds to fashion”, and I will not have answer to that.

H: There are so many different kinds of technologies involved in fashion design and production, but what does fashion add to technology? Fashion is a fun medium for telling stories, being extremely visual and bringing technology close to the body.

Q: If you could have anyone alive or dead wearing your fashion-tech design, whom would you pick, and where would they be?

M: Our project comes with the story of a rich man ordering a dress for his wife to wear for his funeral. I do not know who will be romantic enough to do that.

H: Designing “The Crying Dress” for a fictional character in a futuristic story was a lot of fun and gave us a lot of inspiration and room to make statements about the future of technology. I would love to work on another piece in similar style, where the garment exists within a context that adds meaning to the piece and also inspires details of the design and it’s electronic function.

Q: How do you envision the everyday fashion-tech of the future?

M: I do not think it is necessary that we are wearing fashion-tech in everyday life in future. We may be still wearing wool sweaters and cotton shirts. I think we are at the point to experiment and to play with this technology/techniques to see how we want to have them in future. We may end up not wearing them at all except for one day in your life. Let’s see.

H: I agree with Mika, in our work we are more interested in combining fashion with technology to explore ideas, rather than make our ideas an everyday reality.

Q: Tell us about the piece you developed at Quartier21 during your Artist-in-Residency.

M & H: During our one-month residency at the MuseumsQuartier, we explored the idea of exquisite electronics, electronics as high-end custom crafted goods in contrast to today’s mass-produced affordable electronics designed to suit the needs of many. As a basis for their exploration, we took on a fictional commission for a funeral gown that would accompany the wife of the deceased during her time of mourning. The result of this commission is “The Crying Dress.” Inspired by cultural customs that employ professional mourners to express sorrow for the deceased, the dress is designed to shed tears of mourning that drip from a headpiece onto the gown, passing over hand embroidered sensors that trigger a weeping soundscape played out through embroidered speakers.


Credits: Photographer:  Kiki + courtesy of the artist.
Vienna, August 2012

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YING GAO [CA] “PLAYTIME” (2010) + “(NO)WHERE (NOW)HERE” (2012)



Ying Gao’s “PLAYTIME,” inspired by French film maker Jacques Tati’s 1967 movie of the same name, explores our slippery, and often plain old clunky, relationship to technological advancements. Where Tati proposed an ironic and humorist critique of Modernism’s overtaking of human agency—with automatic garage doors and self-cooking kitchens going awry—Gao looks at the intangibility of grasping our immediate technological environments. With “PLAYTIME” we are offered garments, which eschew documentation by kinetically blurring out (through rapid movement) their own image when being photographed. Like an unruly portrait subject, these garments resist photo documentation—arguably one of the key operatives of the fashion industry—to give us nothing more than a fleeting view, more like the runway performance than the photograph.

It is as if we have gone full circle from Eadweard Muybridge’s use of the camera apparatus to reveal more about the physical world—remember Muybridge first used his stop motion photography to prove that a horse was able to have all legs up in the air when running—to the physical world enacting strategies to hide itself from capture. “(NO)WHERE (NOW)HERE” is a new piece developed while in residence earlier this year at the Quartier21 and features high-tech perception-altering gold encrusted fibres. The garment has the ability to showcase two silhouettes: that of an exterior shell, and that of a “glow int he dark” interior shell, all depending on ambient lighting conditions.



Q: What is your background?
I’m a fashion designer and professor at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). I graduated from both Haute École d’Art et de Design de Genève (HEAD) and UQAM. I’ve been working as a fashion designer for 15 years. I started to be interested in new technologies and media arts while I was completing a master degree in Interactive Multimedia 13 years ago.



Q: What led you to your being involved in fashion and technology?

The desire to experiment and expand my horizons.

Q: What kinds of materials and technologies are used and integrated into your designs? Could you describe the process / challenges / advantages of using these particular materials in fashion and garments?

I use two distinct methods of integrating technology with fashion design: The first method is direct, meaning the microelectronic technology is physically integrated into the garment. The challenge, in terms of fashion design, is to construct garments with free-flowing dimensions affording the potential for numerous shapes, unlike the fixed measurements of so-called traditional garments. My interactive projects propose an in-depth study on the garment’s adjustable structure and the integration of pneumatic and interactive technologies. These garments appear vivid, ephemeral and fluid in shape: one of the dresses vibrantly unfolds when triggered by a ray of light. Another one breathes gently as it is touched by a gust of air. The variety of physical shapes emerges from the art of folding paper, giving a poetic aesthetic form to the ethereal and intangible. It forms a creative framework in which media devices (sensors, cameras, microprocessors) become components of garments.



Secondly, I use the indirect method. Technology is my source of inspiration, it is the base of my creations, but invisible on the garment. Some works are based on the unconventional application of software. “Indice de l’indifférence” used the data of an online survey to modify the pattern, angle and width of a man’s shirt according to the indifference of voters. In “(uni) forms,” a morphing software rendered new uniforms within seconds, ignoring their social implications.


Q: What does technology add to fashion?

I often say that fashion is a sort of “encounter with time.” The future belongs to those who use the technologies of their time. BUT: Both technology and fashion embody the most fragile and ephemeral aspects of our culture, insofar as that which is cutting-edge today will be old news tomorrow. Fashion designers have known for a long time that they are working with a fleeting material that will never be timeless. However, the integration of electronic technology seems to modify the creative process, both in terms of the surface and the structure of garments.



Q: If you could have anyone alive or dead wearing your fashion-tech design, whom would you pick, and where would they be?

A wooden dress mannequin.


Q: How do you envision the everyday fashion-tech of the future?

In certain areas such as sports, military, and medicine, yes, it’s already there. I wonder if our everyday wear will become communication tools in the near future, even if methods are developed to facilitate the integration of these devices.



Q: Tell us about the piece you developed at Quartier21 during your Artist-in-Residency.
The use of the sham within the fashion system is at the core of the conception of the pieces in the series “no(where), now(here)“. Two “sham” garments will allow the public to get a feel of the illusion and repetition that fuel the inner workings of the collection.



Two pieces of clothing; the first is made from a stiff material, it is visible from afar, in day or artificial light. The second is made using photoluminescent thread and pigment, it is visible up-close, in darkness. The two pieces are suspended on a hanger, the first superimposed over the second. A proximity sensor connected to the lighting system detects the presence of the spectator; when he or she enters the room, the lights go on and the first piece is visible, when the spectator leaves, the lights go out and the second piece “unseeably” shows itself.


This play of light and darkness reveals the truth of the forms, and brings to light the pieces’ representational relevance. Their presence is so ephemeral and deceptive that they don’t seem to exist in space and time at all. Are these objects real, or not?

This game of perception and illusion plays with what is not quite real, despite the concrete reality of the objects themselves, whose forms are shaped by the darkness, providing a response to the light.



Credits: Photographer: Dominique Lafond; Portrait Photographer: Marc Tomass.

Montréal, September 2012