“Agender and body inclusive, the clothing line is establishing a community evolving around the limitless nature of digital”
What could questionably be the most important aspect of contemporary fashion, if not its attempt in shaping the light of tomorrow, or, as others would say, the future?
In light of the countless issues and social discrepancies, the role of fashion cannot detract itself from accountability any longer. Being the second most polluting industry worldwide, and probably one of the most disregarded powers in promoting cultural, political and ethical change, nowadays fashion has landed onto a battlefield that requires much more than it used to. Producing clothes, projecting a vision: time requires engagement, it expects creative voices to speak, and bring light to what more than ever should matter now, change. So here I am, hoping for a brighter tomorrow that I ask myself, what is the ethics of the future? Where should fashion be standing within such instances?
The correlation to luxury not only became to represent a myth, it has rather bonded itself to an idea of culture which cannot survive within time. What we are experiencing is a crisis of values, where the reward of luxury is nothing, but individualistic. Looking back at the etymology of luxury, it is clear that its original meaning of ‘abundance’ cannot fit within the contemporary scenario anymore. The act of consumption of the rarefied can no longer withstand, rather, one should question what it could eventually mean today. With the advent and unprecedented development of technology and digital platforms, how can luxury fit within the cyber realm and culture? Digital currency, digital art, the world of NFTs is slowly redefining the meaning of luxury. People are investing in it, they are questioning the principles of its value, making implications that could dismantle our preconception of worth.
Striking attention this spring is nonetheless the digital creator AUROBOROS. Member of The Sarabande Foundation by Lee Alexander Mcqueen, the uprising high-tech brand is deconstructing the boundaries of fashion, placing itself under the spotlight as the first-ever digital fashion house.
The founders Paula Sello and Alissa Aulbekova, respectively digital designer, and director of visual communication, have been merging forces in bringing to life the first brand blending physical haute couture to digital-only ready-to-wear design. With innovation at the core of their project, the designers are morphing their sci-fi and nature inspiration, to project the wearer into another world, into other realities: to take the physical experience onto unexplored territories.
Two are the lines the brand is currently covering: physical couture and digital RTW. The first, focused on innovative science, employs never-used-before materials in correlation to temporality. Designing pieces that grow over a longer period of time, the brand’s couture creations project patterns from nature onto the wearer’s bodies, transcending the evolution of the materials from the very first stages of their conception, to their growth and final disintegration. On the other hand, AUROBOROS’ RTW line is instead debuting on a full-digital basis: capping material wait to 0, and addressing luxury to a much wider audience. Agender and body inclusive, the clothing line is establishing a community evolving around the limitless nature of digital: a domain where body diversity and disabilities can be fully represented, bringing self-expression to an innovative brand new stage.
AUROBOROS allows the wearer to encapsulate the garment onto any visual source. it allows materials exchangeability, including fire, jellyfish, metal: in other words, a limitless asset of opportunities. Not only is RTW being deprived of its infamous idea of luxury, the brand is also actively opening it to a wider dialogue, demonstrating the power of technology in generating utopia rather than dystopia.
As pointed out by the designers, digital fashion should not dictate, it should rather push us to explore identity, and reconnect to nature. Imagine a world where anything could be worn: with creativity being the only limit, it is within such instances that luxury is pushed to an idea of experiencing something that you would have never thought of before.
With this in mind, how could consumerism accept the digitalisation of fashion to become the ultimate luxury?
Dropping their debut collection this June during London Fashion Week in official tech partnership with the Institute of Digital Fashion, the brand’s hopes fall within the understanding of their creative process as an effort in creating a new world, rather than a mere digitalisation of a tangible experience. What this seems to be all about, is to suit fashion to the customer, erasing its impersonal contemporary status. AUROBOROS has successfully demonstrated the necessity for accessibility, but, most importantly, has opened up a discussion that has been required for a long time. How we engage with technology is what will define our future.
Credits
Images · AUTOBOROS