Fashion met tech in two stunning Met Gala dresses, but where’s the rest?
Marchesa and IBM made a dress that changes colour according to twitter sentiment while Zac Posen created a glow in the dark gown that wowed crowds.
At the Met Gala Ball, fashion was meant to meet technology, but there was little more than celebrity names showing off in silver rather than a real demonstration of the innovation in fashion technology.
The yearly event, which attracts the headlines of the celebrity and fashion press and is hosted by fashion doyen and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, took on the theme of "Manus X Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology". Anyone would think that wearables hadn't even been invented yet.
While the Zac Posen dress worn by Homeland star Claire Danes was a truly wondrous creation, the stage of the Met steps could have been a runway for so much more.
The Posen dress in daylight and, below, after dark (Source: Getty)
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Model Karolina Kurkova dressed in a gown with LED lights that, thanks to IBM's Watson computer, changes colour according to different emotions.
The Marchesa dress in daylight and, further below, in low light (Source: Getty)
The Ball kicked off the full exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, however, which will explore the matter more in depth.
"We're trying to debunk some of the mythologies of the handmade and the machine made," said Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's curator who used to be in charge of London's very own Victoria and Albert Museum.
"Traditionally the handmade has been seen as about luxury, that superiority and something that's elitist, whereas the machine is seen as progress and future. mediocrity and dehumanisation, and finding that those values don't really hold up."
London is on the front foot when it comes to fashtech (yep, that's fashion tech), with several designers having demonstrated conceptual tech outfits at London's high profile fashion week.
That has included 3D printed shoes, connected jewellery and even a skirt created out of Nokia's Lumia smartphone, in recent years.
And while some of these concepts are hardly heading for the high street immediately, the Met Gala is the exact place to be testing out these concepts which might just provide that spark of inspiration for something that could be the next big thing.
Let's not even mention Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom who thought this was the time for a retro Tamagotchi throw back.
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