The Future is Now

Designers mix advanced technology and fashion to create futuristic worlds on and off the runway.

Fashion designers are modern-day alchemists, reimagining the world and synthesizing their beliefs into clothing. Fashion is a space in which designers not only design clothes, but also reimagine society. Issey Miyaki, Iris van Herpen, Marine Serre and Paula Ulargui Escalona are among designers who are writing a new narrative for fashion by using technologically innovative techniques to produce more sustainable garments. Threaded through the clothes are designers' worries and dreams about the world, ones which reflect an increasing global consciousness of the endangered natural world. 

Issey Miyake

Issey Miyake’s designs take on a life of their own, floating and bouncing down the runway in ways that ordinary dresses seldom do. His collections have shocked and delighted audiences, with dresses drifting from the ceiling onto models or stretching and compressing like accordions around their bodies.  

The late Japanese designer pioneered a technologically advanced pleating method to achieve these unique forms. Rather than pleating fabric and then cutting and sewing it, the garments are fully assembled before heat and pressure are applied to create the permanent micro-pleats. The process was the inspiration for Miyake’s revered line, “Pleats, Please.”

The designs speak to the Issey Miyake label’s core philosophy: using technological innovation to make a designer item that will last the wearer for life. Miyake’s ready-to-wear pleated garments are machine-washable, durable and wrinkle-proof. They can be worn over and over without losing their form.

They are also emblematic of Miyake’s career-long fascination with the intersection of industrial design and clothing. In a lecture he delivered after receiving the 2006 Kyoto Prize, Miyake compared his studio to a research lab where he conducts experiments. Beyond developing pleating technologies, Miyake constructs garments out of recycled materials and creates forms that defy conventional shapes and silhouettes. His innovations cemented his reputation as far more than a clothing designer — in 1977, he won the Mainichi Design Prize, Japan’s most prestigious award for achievement in design. He was the first non-industrial designer to do it. 

Iris van Herpen

Iris van Herpen’s elaborate designs appear far from man-made. The complexity of her designs makes it hard to believe that the Dutch designer does not have a background in science — just a fascination with the natural world that translates into designs resembling the bizarre organisms in biology textbooks. Her collections often start with conceptual questions, both whimsical and deeply thought-provoking, she told the New Yorker. Van Herpen and her team contemplate what unusual materials can be turned into fabric, what connects all living organisms, and what challenges are facing our world. Her Fall/Winter 2021 collection titled “Earthrise,” for example, explores the increasingly fragile marine ecosystems being damaged by climate change. 

However, the way she produces her designs is anything but natural. Van Herpen’s designs are made out of recycled and unconventional objects, ranging from Evian bottles to umbrella bones and motorcycle chains. Her fabrics, too, have been made from things like acrylic mesh, iron and foil. She uses technology such as 3D printing and laser cutting to bring it all together. Her garments blur the lines between two worlds: the natural and the hyper-advanced man-made one. 

Van Herpen’s designs are more akin to sculptures and artwork than clothing, as she only makes one of each garment and does not produce full collections at the pace most designers do. The beauty of her work is that she takes pieces of the modern world, both the wasteful and the innovative, and creates something breathtaking with them.

Marine Serre

Marine Serre’s crescent moon is currently one of high fashion’s most recognizable logos. To the French designer, the moon represents many different things historically. She recognizes the various meanings behind the moon in culture such as life, freedom and fertility. Serre chose the moon for the fluidity of its meaning and recognizability. 

Serre’s signature design is a mesh bodysuit full of crescent moons. Her designs have futuristic elements and her collections can be described as “dystopian.” The top version of the bodysuit is often used for layering to add an interesting element to the skin of the wearer. Serre has stated that she likes to mix sportswear and couture in her designs, giving the brand a very eclectic look.

Serre attended the La Cambre Mode(s) Belgian Fashion Design academy and garnered fame when she won the 2017 LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers. But her passion for design started in her youth, which she spent going to resale shops and sifting through vintage clothing with her grandfather, a secondhand clothing dealer. She is now widely known in the high fashion industry for her passion for upcycling.

Serre stresses the idea of circularity in her business model.  She wants pieces from previous seasons to be able to be reused and reinvented. One way she does this is by using recycled denim. Serre uses a laser to print her moon symbol on the denim to make it her own.

Nearly half of Serre’s collections are made of upcycled products such as carpets, tea towels and cutlery.  Her brand is transformative in the movement towards creating high fashion out of used and worn everyday items.