GENEVA — In the rarefied world of high fashion, she has made her mark designing “interactive” clothes. Yes…a blast, a sound, a flash or even just a look can make her creations suddenly light up or start to move.
When a spectator looks at Ying Gao’s two photo-luminescent dresses called “(No) where (now) here,” for example, the dresses suddenly contract and move thanks to inflatable sensors and motors.
“I don’t know if people are singled out for good reasons. But surely the technological aspect is what intrigues,” she sighs.
More than anything, the Chinese-born fashion designer, who divides her time between Geneva and Montreal, is afraid of being misunderstood. That’s exactly what happened when she presented one of her creations called “Playtime,” a dress that features scattered lights that are activated by camera flashes, which can foil attempts at photographing the woman who might be wearing it. It is a tribute to Jacques Tati’s movie “Playtime” in which the filmmaker uses trompe-l’oeil effects and reflections. Thus Yiang Gao wasn’t pleased when journalists dubbed her creation “anti-paparazzi” fashion.
“It sounded terrible,” she says. “A misunderstood object represents the death of the concept and it kills the desire to experiment.”
A Lady Gaga nightmare
Her nightmare would be to see Lady Gaga wearing one of her dresses on a red carpet. Therefore, she refuses, for the moment, to produce a limited edition of her creations. “I prefer to see it in museums for now, so they maintain an experimental character. It is just the beginning for interactive clothes, and I need to wait for the field to mature.”
Ying Gao’s dream is to create self-thinking interactive clothes, and she has been testing a device for more than a year that can transform dresses by water movements.
On the technical side, the designer has collaborated for more than a decade with Simon Laroche, an artist who works with robotics. They have begun using 3D-printers, which allow them to develop unique and miniaturized pieces and motors. She hopes her clothes can someday make everyone reflect on appearances. They already make us dream.
