The Creators Project

How did you go from engineering to fashion?
That was a little chain of events. At Philips [Research Labs] I worked for a research group which researched the future and projected technologies ten years ahead to see what kind of designs would develop. So we worked with wearable electronics, but that was more like a fringe interest of mine. After that I got to know Ron Arad and we collaborated for Swarovski. We made a quite famous chandelier called Lolita where you could present short messages. That was my first project in the world of design. It was quite successful from the start and it was published in lots of magazines and then I was in the middle of the design world. People got to know that I was able to deliver technical solutions. One project followed the other, and then there was this project with Hussein Chalayan.

How did that collaboration work?
I did three projects with him and everyone was a little bit different. The first one was really elaborate and so we had a quite big team. Loads of fashion people, special effects people which whom I worked really closely. Then there were two other projects – one was a video dress we created together. He came to me and told me he wanted to have a video dress in four weeks time because the Paris show was coming up. That was crazy. I actually lived in his studio because I didn’t have had any time and slept on his couch. The whole surface of the dress had to be able to show videos. It was rather difficult because you can’t go to a shop and buy video fabric so we had to see which materials we could use for that.

How did you end up solving the problem of the video dress?
The first thought was LEDs because I couldn’t imagine anything else and then I produced a lot of small circuits which we inserted underneath the tissue and which were able to show frequencies of light. It was like a big puzzle and all the pieces together showed a large image. Every little circuit was able to show only 4 pixels.

The fashion you create looks quite futuristic. Can you imagine people running around with LEDs on their backs in the future?
That’s a little bit difficult to predict. I can imagine that it will touch people that are really expressive and wear edgy clothes and jewelry already. But in daily life it might be a little impractical. Maybe you won’t be able to wash the clothes or something like that. There will be compromises you have to make with the technology.

Do you wish to see your creations more in the daily life?
In April this year I worked with Campeggi and they wanted to have something they could use at the furniture exhibition in Milano. It’s a kind of jewelery you can wear underneath your clothes and it shines through the fabric. So you just see the effect not the device. This is something I can imagine selling because in the design itself I eliminated the inconveniences of wearable electronics. So that could go more into the mainstream market.

Looking back, how does it feel have to come from engineering to fashion?
Funny. The energy is completely different compared to the design world. In design you present something and afterwards you can have a party. In the fashion world we worked like crazy without sleep, then there was the show and 20 minutes afterwards everyone was gone and you find yourself in a complete empty room. Everything was much faster. It was fun and interesting, but is not the only world I want to live in.