The late 70s/early 80s proved exciting years for early 3-D experiments both in films and in print: if you were a kid around these years, you may remember films taken from Japanese anime series such as Rittai anime ie naki ko Remi (Homeless Child Remi) or children’s magazines with pages featuring 3-D illustrations accompanied by the ubiquitous paper glasses with red and blue lenses.
Time has passed and three-dimensional animation has tremendously developed, changed and advanced.
Being 3-D the most perfect medium when it comes to fashion since it
allows you to explore a design from different angles and perspectives, there have been quite a few application of this technique in fashion.
As you may remember, Dazed & Confused's August 2009 issue featured a three-dimensional shoot with Marios Schwab’s Autumn/Winter 2009 3D-inspired collection, photographed by Terry Tsiolis.
The idea of using 3-D fashion images was promptly reused here and there, even in a recent catalogue by Italian brand Fornarina.
Vogue Italia - always the last to jump on the bandwagon, but definitely the best at copying ideas and regurgitating them in style - included in its September 2010 issue a 20-page 3D photo shoot by Steven Meisel featuring Miranda Kerr.
3-D technology also inspired innovative approaches to fashion presentations to different brands: Burberry Prorsum showcased its A/W 2010 collection in a technologically advanced way, offering the chance to carefully selected guests in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Dubai to watch a 3-D live stream of the show in specifically designed venues.
For the next season the fashion house is instead aiming at adding another dimension to its previous technological experience: on 21st September customers in 15 different countries will be able to watch the London catwalk show live in Burberry flagship stores thanks to the Retail Theatre, a technologically revolutionary concept set to offer consumers a sort of ultimate experience in modern luxury through high definition screens and sharp sound.
There is definitely a 3D trend going on at the moment, but I also think that the best inspirations for the fashion industry won't be coming from designers, but from cinema, 3-D animation studios and even architecture.
I have explored in a previous post Wim Wenders's 3-D film for SANAA, but at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, there was also another project that employed three-dimensional techniques.
The Australian Pavilion offered indeed innovative photography mixed with 3D rendering techniques in the project entitled ‘NOW and WHEN Australian Urbanism’.
Using ground-breaking 3-D stereoscopic technology, the project investigates Australian landscapes from new perspectives through oblique stereo aerial photographs taken by Co-Creative Director John Gollings and architectural visions for the future presented by different architects and rendered in 3-D by FloodSlicer, a pioneering Australian studio.
"There is a sort of 3-D trend and this year has really seen the most viable explosion of this technology in the whole world,” Gollings - who worked as fashion photographer for twenty years before going back to his roots and architectural studies and switching to buildings - recently explained me in an interview. "All the technology is pushing towards 3-D: scientists and doctors are using it for example in medicine, to do operations and find their way through the human body. I think in future, after achieving quantum computers 3-D holographic technology, rather than having a flat screen on their walls, people will have a have a life-size holographic recreation of the world you’re looking at inside your living room.”
As I write the last touches are being added to the awarding ceremony of the second edition of the Persol 3-D Award for the most creative 3-D stereoscopic film of the year at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.
The jury, chaired by horror director Takashi Shimizu and comprising Jim Hoberman and David Zamagni, will award the film (the list is long and includes James Cameron's Avatar, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3) that has used stereoscopic 3-D in the most creative way.
The award will be assigned tonight, followed by a presentation of Taikong xia 3D (Space Guy) by Zhang Yuan, the first 3D stereoscopic film from mainland China, and by Shimizu's, Senritsu meikyu 3D (Shock Labyrinth 3D), inspired by the Labyrinth of Horrors at Fuji-Q High Land amusement park, near Mount Fuji.
Three-dimensional technologies may still have to be improved, yet fashion should definitely keep an eye on the developments that 3-D stereoscopic information in motion may provide us with as I'm sure this technology will offer new levels of interest and innovative applications and inspirations to designers.
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