What does hand-made couture look like in the age of the avatar?
The Institute of Digital Fashion may have just given us our first glimpse.
With help from August Getty Atelier, their latest collection “Tinitus,” is a glorious new benchmark for digital craftsmanship.
The collection, which, according to the IoDF, is “blending traditional couture with the intricacies of digital fashion,” was launched last week as a series of immersive video experiences guiding the viewer to four dresses at augustgetty.com with deeper dives into detailing at the Instagram pages of both the digital fashion brand and the haute couture house.
What stands out to us, and we’ve 🧐 seen every piece of digital fashion 🧐 ever made, is the dedication to, as the New York Times’ Robert Smith once referred to it, “the mind-boggling craft and exquisite technique” of fashion when it approaches art.
“The project itself was built live over zoom calls piece by piece, every gem created bespoke and placed,” the IoDF says.
The result is dazzling in a way few pieces of digital fashion are. The richness of the resolution makes the videos feel like they may zoom in forever. The gems each pick up the light from seemingly infinite angles. Gold and silver thread look fine and delicate next to heavy stones.
The IoDF is coming fresh off the success of their “A New Future” augmented reality showroom built with MACHINE A to coincide with London Fashion Week.
“Whilst storied houses are playing catch up, creative director Leanne Elliott Young and digital designer CattyTay have always been ahead of the curve,” writes SHOWstudio.
The August Getty garments meticulously created here certainly seem to reinforce their right to claim the leadership position in digital fashion.
Taking us behind the scenes of the fashion process, or what they call “demystifying the fashion landscape,” seems to be a particular interest of the pair.
“For the couture garments, we received a muslin from the [August Getty Atelier] team, we physically investigated, pulled apart and tested the individual pattern layers,” Tay told SHOWstudio. “Our 3D garment specialist team then set about recreating these pieces into bespoke 3D objects, dissecting each part – it’s like being the architect but then also making every brick.”
Here’s to whatever Young and Taylor are doing next.
