Things get taken to the next level.
[post_ads]You might not have given augmented reality much thought, but chances are
you use it every day (hello, Snapchat lenses!). And, although virtual
reality gets a lot of hype, augmented reality (AR) has the potential to
take us much further, at least according to fashion designer Kailu Guan.
While we've all been snapping pics using the dog filter while posing
with our actual dogs, Guan has been using this technology to allow her
clothing to tell richly woven stories inspired by a Japanese mountain
town.
For her, it all started with Hermès. While a student at Parsons School
of Design, Guan participated in a challenge: help the luxury brand make a
concept to sell their famous scarves on a digital platform. When Guan
began looking at an AR tool that Hermès had created for their perfumes
as an example, her eyes opened to a whole new world of fashion and
technology.
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"Before, the perfume was just a smell to me," Guan says.
"With the AR app, I scan the perfume and now I know the story behind it.
I know how people created it. I know if it was made with flowers or
wood. It was a very intimate interaction."
Using screen printing, Guan translated her patterns into computer code
that her AR app could read and transform into video, sounds, and 3-D
shapes for the pieces in her thesis collection. Since graduating last
June, the 23-year-old designer has continued to develop these ideas
under the name KG Projects, extending her work of endowing clothing with
multiple meanings. "It has different lives," she says. "What you see
through the media will tell you a lot more than what you see in real
life." Put another way, the new digital tale creates more of a
relationship between the wearer and the designer.
