Fashion brands and trendsetters turn to our consumerist culture of design, interactivity and new media to track today’s modernity. Hypnotic screens with vivid imagery and artificial colours make up the every day world of millions of young people with a habit of photo and video sharing, constantly mingling fiction with reality. In this pixellated world, time is compressed to instants and frames. Images are both sharp and blurry, enlarged, zoomed in and out, or moved around, copied, pasted, duplicated.

The quality and color of an image depends on the talent and taste of the photoshopper, who follows his very own ideal of graphic perfection. 3D projection mapping, 3D films or video games and their special effects have accustomed us to a flux of ever new, and ever powerful visual sensations that are designed to stimulate and provoke. 

This hyperrealistic universe has inspired many a designer who seeks to capture the magical, mysterious and evanescent qualities of the screen.

To begin with, Riccardo Tisci’s Givenchy Fall 2011 Ready-to-wear and accessories collections seem to be influenced by the digital world: high resolution printed sleeves v.s. low resolution printed skirts, pattern arrangements of black panthers and disturbing orchids, layer on layer, border on border and picture within picture collages. Saturation, exposure, vibrancy and contrast have all been purposely ‘worked’. 

In a similar computer graphics spirit, the Christian Dior Fall 2011 scarf ‘Jardin Imaginaire’ shows motifs and typographic vignette images that appear to have been ‘filled in’ using contrasting neon Pantone colours. 

The house of  Hermès created a pixellated silk scarf, ‘Magic Kelly’, which is offered in seven Cinderella colours. The scarf shows a virtual version of the legendary Kelly bag with fairytale sparkles…a girly luxury accessory that can be ‘window shopped’ through your e-shop account.

For their Spring/Summer 2012 collection, the Peter Pilotto duo also appear to have been influenced by photo editing techniques and ‘filters’ used in graphic design: mosaic, glass, stenciled and spray-painted visual effects on ‘digitalized’ sexy dresses.

In addition, Mary Katrantzou printed photos on fabric to depict endless woods and fields of identical flowers shot from bird’s eye view with the hyperrealism of database images used in ads and package design: fake flowers, fake silk made of cellophane and plastic imitating gold…the staging of  virtuality itself. 

Louise Kissa

lkissa@neurope.eu