Waterloo Architecture hits runway at Paris Fashion Week

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

New 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 

Paris fashion week
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 

Paris Fashion Week design
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.