Waterloo Architecture took part in this year's Paris Fashion Week. The Waterloo Hylozoic Architecture group led by Philip Beesley collaborated with fashion designer Iris Van Herpen to help create 10 dresses for her new Magnetic Motion collection.
The following article is currently featured on the University of Waterloo Engineering news website:
Waterloo Architecture hits runway at Paris Fashion Week
Wednesday, October 8, 2014New designs presented during Paris Fashion Week by a group of University of Waterloo architects and engineers has been enthusiastically received by the global media.
Waterloo’s Hylozoic Architecture group led by Philip
Beesley of Waterloo's School of Architecture with Dana Kulić of electrical and computer engineering professor, Rob Gorbet of knowledge integration and Matt Borland of systems design engineering has extended its longstanding collaboration with radical fashion designer Iris Van Herpen by contributing to 10 dresses for her new Magnetic Motion collection. The collection was shown at the Centre Pompidou during Paris Fashion Week.
Supported by advanced computational modeling and industrial design, Waterloo's Hylozoic Architecture group's innovative designs combine precisely detailed polymer, crystal and leather components into interlinking three-dimensional fabric structures with striking qualities of flexibility, sparkle and transparency.
Bridging between couture and ready-to-wear
Beesley and collaborators’ new engineered fabrics bridge
between couture and ready-to-wear. One piece suggests hovering, aura-like waffle-shells using delicate thermoformed acrylics connected by silicone links. Another uses a hybrid pleat inspired by the early-twentieth-century designer Mariano Fortuny, expanded into a corrugated meshwork that combines leather, transparent polymer links and crystalline inclusions.
The collaboration has been growing in momentum with van Herpen’s launch of ready-to-wear lines of clothing that translate the radical experiment of her haute couture explorations into comfortable, highly finished form-fitting clothing.