CORRECTION: Feb. 16, 2016, 3:54 p.m. EST A previous version of this article said Apple would provide the music for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition, but that was incorrect. Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" will stream at the event, but not from Apple Music. The Metropolitan Museum of Art will curate the musical experience.
NEW YORK – Fashion technology is where the industry is headed, but how exactly will they embrace each other?
That was the question posed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's press event for its upcoming Costume Institute, entitled: "Manus x Machina."
The theme explores how fashion has seemingly always been at odds with technology, and poses the question of how both can work together in the future. Music will be a part of the exhibition as well, and Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" will be one of the soundtracks streamed. Met curator Andrew Bolton explained it was the first album created under the label "ambient music."
Unlike what most would have assumed, the very title doesn’t derive from Alex Garland’s 2015 flick, Ex Machina, rather, it was inspired by the 1927 sci-fi film, Metropolis, Bolton explained. The curator said it was director Fritz Lang's vision of a dystopian future in the class film – one in which technology took over the world and ultimately destroyed it – that made the theme clear.
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“The movie starts and ends between the mediator between the head and the hand, the heart,” he said. “The entire plot is man versus machine.”
It’s the same relationship between fashion and technology since machinery was introduced in the 19th century. It was this discordant relationship that designers had between stitching by hand and via machine that became contentious.
The very definition of haute couture, which in its very essence is all about crafting one-of-a-kind creations by hand, then, was completely challenged.
“One can’t help but wonder if haute couture would have emerged as a response of fear and the response of the democratic possibilities of the sewing machine,” Bolton posed. “In the history of fashion, fear and clothing are connected through technology. There are times when the hand has been celebrated and the machine, denigrated, and vice versa.”
Though this contemptuous relationship has seemed to resolve itself in the past few years, it’s interesting how this rivalry has emerged again.
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History has indeed repeated itself, but this time with wearable technology. It's become even more apparent that tech in fashion is desirable, as in the last year alone, the wearable tech industry exploded, thanks in part to the Apple Watch.
Designers are now scrambling to see how they, too, can incorporate wearables into their businesses, from fitness trackers, lights, cameras, to 3D printing.
Still, there’s this notion of fear as well with the technology space. It is a brand new frontier, after all.
But just as haute couture and the rise of the machine seems to have adapted with one another, co-habitating in the same space seems to be a new reality.
“Instead of presenting the handmade and the machine-made as oppositions, the exhibition suggests that they are equal and mutual protagonists, solving design problems and practices, ultimately advancing the future of fashion,” Bolton said.
He has a strong point.
A recent example of this adaptation was by Chanel, which made it clear that fashion and technology could, indeed, not only co-exist with one another but do so without compromising its aesthetic.
It was Karl Lagerfeld’s jacket and skirt in fall's 2016 haute couture show that included 3D-printed white polyamide overlay together with hand-stitched clear crystals. The beauty of it all was that the 3D printing was seamless and felt natural, rather than forced.
How fashion will truly embrace wearable technology is a question that is still yet TBD, but the Met, along with Wintour, Apple, and the exhibition, are there to push it forward.
And what an exciting time to be alive, at the beginning stages of what will certainly be the future.
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