It's a new year and part of my resolutions is to resume blogging again. It is a rather convenient time to do so since the tennis year has started again and the Fall 2011 fashion weeks are coming up soon in February. So not only are there plenty of new tennis gears to be anticipated on the courts, there are a whole slew of new fashion waiting to be walked down the runways of NY, Paris, London, and Milan. As exciting as that is, I struggle to find a topic suitable for a relaunch, a topic that is important but yet fresh enough to kick-start the year of 2011.
So obviously I found a great topic (since you're reading it right now), and it's sustainable fashion. Sustainability is no doubt the future of our world; faced with limited resource and a growing amount of waste, each industry is fighting to march into the frontier of sustainability and fashion is no different. Though the topic itself seems red hot, the actual discussions don't steer too far from innovative material and stays at the surface of technology. Many of them lacks the integration of technology with arts and design, and not to mention the whole culture at large. So it wasn't until now when I came across 132 5. Issey Miyake when I finally see an innovative, inspiring, and artistic rendition of how to do sustainable fashion.
Famed Japanese avant-garde designer Issey Miyake's Reality Lab has created a collection in which 3D structured garments can be folded into two-dimensional shapes with one single piece of fabric called PET, a material generated with chemical recycling by pulverizing, melting, and "spinning" threads out of polyethylene terephthalate. The whole process is created by a computer software which interpret the design and then strategically designates creases and folds on the fabric to enable it to be flattened and reopened into structured shirts, pants, jackets, and single piece dresses.
The technology itself can decipher how to turn a 3D object into a 2D shape by placing folds, which eliminates the need of needles, stitches, and an excess of processing the fabric.
With a single lift, the garment can be "sprung" to life!
The question is, can the 3D dress be easily folded back into its 2D form? Can you sit on it?? Well, practicality often comes second when one is trying to chart the future, right?
The numbers themselves has significance also. 1 represents the single piece of fabric needed for each garment. 3 signifies the 3D shape and 2 represents the ability of the garment to be folded into a two-dimensional shape. The space represents the duration of time between creating the garment and the consumer actually wearing it. And 5 signifies a hope that there will be further incarnations of this initiative in the future.
The beauty of this collection lies in its ability to present art and culture through the modern lenses of technology. So often people talk about the emerging trend of sustainable fashion, but for the movement to really take hold and flourish in the high-fashion realm, merely using recycled material is not enough, it will be demanded from designers to incorporate sustainability in a more integrated manner.
