Interactive Apparel
Ying Gao is a Montreal based fashion designer and a professor at UQAM. She received the Phyllis-Lambert Design Montreal Grant, which allowed her to question our assumptions about fashion and apparel through urban design, architecture and multimedia. She is interested in the forming of the garment that is still in the process of becoming a design. She play in the phase of construction and inspired by the transformations of the garment. Sensory technologies play a big part for her designs and make the garments more playful and interactive. Her work testifies to the profound mutation of the world in which we live and carries with it a radical critical dimension that transcends technological experimentation.
Her latest work is produced with the Phyllis-Lambert Design Montreal grant and named Berlin-Nagoya. Berlin-Nayoga features two dresses complying to today’s accelerated mobility of people and information. Two items; the scarf and the dress carry a second function as, respectively a dress and a screen and a scarf with a bag. This sort of design resembles the work of many others. However, Lucy Orta and Hussein Chalayan comes to mind first considering they are both experimental and both experimenting with that transformation and mutation of the garment and finding multi purposes for what they have designed in order to reach today’s competitive lifestyle.
The second interactive project I want to mention by Ying Gao is and earlier work; the Walking City. There are 3 interactive dresses in this project that are made out of cotton, nylon and electronic devices. Air, is a fascinating element at the intersection of colour, light and vibration. And air is also one of the materials used in this project. The fluid movement of breathing is simulated using sensors that are sown in to the garment. The pleated garment is a reminder of the Japanese origami. These pieces are harder to understand than traditional garments due to the mischief factor of the dress’s mobility.
niente by nil
one of Gao’s designs
Playtime, interactive dress
The Walking City, dress one
The Walking City, dress two
The Walking City, dress three
