Giant sheepskins, crumpled metallic leather and plastic sheets adorned models at fashion designer Gareth Pugh‘s Autumn Winter 2014 show during Paris Fashion Week.
Pugh washed out the palette for his latest collection, predominantly using white furs and plastics to create garments with exaggerated silhouettes.
A huge key for winding up old-fashioned clockwork toys protruded from the back of a dress that zipped up at the front.
Fluffy outfits were accompanied by wide-brimmed hats with lengthened crowns to further distort the silhouette.
One top was formed from a transparent piece of plastic tied around the waist and continued up as a flat sheet to the eye line.
A range of garments were created in metallic leather, which was bunched up and crinkled to create texture and warp the reflections.
PVC was tied into halter necks, wrapped to form waistbands and scrunched into skirts, and then worn over cream dresses.
Coats also included a layer of see-through plastic over the top, which extended past the hems.
More tops were formed from overlapping squares of white plastic so they appeared pixellated.
Twisting trousers continued over the shoes, creating the illusion of longer legs.
Models’ hands were covered in chalk and all without hats wore cream hair nets.
The show took place yesterday as part of Paris Fashion Week, which continues until 5 March.
Visitors to London department store Selfridges can take a virtual reality tour created by technology company Inition inside a helmet by fashion designer Gareth Pugh (+ slideshow).
Gareth Pugh worked with Inition to create a “multi-sensory experience” called Monolith, installed at Selfridges for the Festival of Imagination taking place this month.
“The inspiration for this piece really came from the desire to create a totally immersive experience,” said Pugh. “I’ve always believed in the importance of fashion film and new technology as a means of communication.”
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
The visitor enters a soundproofed booth and completely covers their head with a pointy black helmet, which Pugh designed specifically for the installation based on costumes he created for the Royal Ballet.
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
Using an Oculus Rift virtual reality display embedded in the headpiece, the wearer is taken on a journey through monochromatic cityscapes, undulating walls and figures with silhouettes that are also similar to Pugh’s costumes.
“It’s an abstract narrative based on Gareth’s life, his works and his experiences,” senior creative at Inition Alex Lambert told Dezeen.
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
Once geared up, a 360-degree white environment is visible all around. “When you’re inside [the headpiece] you are transported to another world,” said Lambert. “It’s a totally immersive, full 360-degree virtual world that you can look around.”
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
The experience begins when staring at a spinning black cube found in the artificial world. “Aesthetically it looks very similar to Gareth’s work, and as soon as you look at that cube and it spins for a certain period of time it starts,” Lambert explained.
Hand rails are installed around the sides of the compact space in case the user loses their balance during the experience. Industrial music by London artist Matthew Stone accompanies the visuals.
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
The project was developed as one of a series of experimental installations and pop-ups at the Festival of Imagination that runs all this month, as well as to coincide with the London Collections: Men fashion event that took place in the British capital last week.
Visuals seen during the virtual reality experience
Here’s some more information sent to us by Inition:
Experience fashion designer Gareth Pugh’s virtual reality journey at Selfridges
Creative production company Inition produces a mind-bending virtual reality experience launched by Selfridges to mark fashion designer Gareth Pugh’s first appearance on the London Collection: Men’s Schedule.
The Monolith installation includes a futuristic cutting edge immersive journey into the inspirations and aesthetics of the acclaimed designer’s vision for his new collection.
Gareth Pugh says: “The inspiration for this piece really came from the desire to create a totally immersive experience. I’ve always believed in the importance of fashion film and new technology as a means of communication, but the team at Inition were able to propose a new and exciting way for us to approach this project. It’s an exciting opportunity to re-imagine my aesthetic in a totally new context.”
Pugh worked with Inition 3D artists to ensure the multi-sensory experience truly reflected his inspirations.
“This was a very exciting project to work on, as it was very creatively led but also had a number of new technical aspects that needed to be overcome in order to achieve the desired feeling that Gareth wanted to convey,” says Inition senior 3D artist Lee Spooner.
After entering a soundproofed chamber, users wear a characteristically geometric Gareth Pugh VR headset, which harnesses Oculus Rift technology to bring the 3D visuals to life. Virtual reality has never been used in a retail setting in such a way before.
With hand rails provided in case of momentary loss of balance, the two minute futuristic fashion film and part fairground ride begins, featuring monochromatic cityscapes, undulating walls and signature stark shapes, all underscored by an industrial gritty sound track produced by London based artist Matthew Stone.
Inition has been producing virtual reality experiences since 2001 but with recent advances in technology, imagination can now be less constrained, as perfectly illustrated by the Gareth Pugh’s Selfridges installation.
“Our history of creating bespoke experiences using emerging technology platforms was a natural fit with the pioneering work of Pugh and the innovative approach to retail taken by Selfridges. This is a market with huge potential for digital technologies and Inition is delighted to be pushing boundaries within this space,” says Ainsley Henn, Producer at Inition.
Monolith installation from the outside
“It was nice to be able to let our creativity and imaginations run free, and early on we had a good understanding with Gareth about the direction he wanted this immersive experience to take,” says Lee Spooner.
Gareth Pugh continued, “The title, Monolith, is the perfect description for this piece: something singular and imposing, and in some way otherworldly. I imagine that each person will view it differently, but I would hope that it’s something memorable and engaging. Ultimately the installation requires a little commitment, you need to step into that world – from the padded sound proofed booth to the angular head piece required to view the installation… they’re all considered parts of this unique experience.”
The Monolith installation is now open to the public and is located in the Menswear department of Selfridges (London) on Level 1.
British fashion designer Gareth Pugh sent models down the runway in dresses made from strips of bin liners during his Paris Fashion Week show.
Pugh shredded the rubbish bags into strips then layered them up to create outfits and accessories that look like pom-poms.
The material is also tightly woven into dresses, a coat and a scarf, with the edges left frayed to create volume.
The bags were purchased from a pound shop in Stoke Newington, close to where Dezeen’s offices are based.
The collection also featured floor-length robes in heavy fabrics that are bunched and creased asymmetrically around the top, sometimes only covering one arm.
Sleeves are continued upward, skimming past the shoulders to form stiff collars in rings much wider than the neck, which sit just below chin level.
Some garments splay out at the waist, while others flare from the bust to form triangular silhouettes.
Leather wrap coats are folded over at the top to create giant collars that reach down to the waist.
Embroidered gold branches creep up from the hems of white dresses and coats.
Injections of blue are the only colours seen intermittently between the largely monochrome garments.
The collection was inspired by the Asgarda tribe of women, who live in the Ukraine’s Carpathian mountains.
Designed in Hackney: we’re stepping into the fashion world for Designed in Hackney this week, showcasing fashion designers who are based in the borough every day. We start with Gareth Pugh‘s sculptural designs for new ballet Carbon Life, which had its premier at the Royal Opera House last month.
With choreography by Wayne McGregor and music by producer Mark Ronson, the ballet is a modern fusion of pop, dance and fashion, with Pugh’s graphic designs distorting the body into architectural forms.
Known for his dark and theatrical creations, Pugh found success through east-London design initiative Fashion East not long after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2003. He now has a studio in Dalston.
Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to showcase world-class architecture and design created in the borough, which is one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices. We’ll publish buildings, interiors and objects that have been designed in Hackney each day until the games this summer.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
