skinamica

source: fashionphreakingwordpress

Studio Nancy Tilbury is a Fashion Laboratory based in London, UK. Our focus is digital and physical intimacy. We strategize, innovate and create fashioned technologies and hybridize science and couture. With backgrounds in fashion design, textile technology and computer science through trans-practice we interrogate future ways of wearing. Via material technologies, machines and tools we establish original means of manufacturing to regenerate methods for fashion creation, as well as question our personal relationship to the body in the 21st century. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1997 Nancy Tilbury has worked in the field of wearable technology, she was critical in the development of both strategic and commercial ‘wearable’ design for Philips Design in partnership with Levi’s, Nike and Orange.

Studio Nancy Tilbury’s innovation portfolio includes Digital Skins | Body Atmospheres a fashion futures film set in 2050 to explore the future human through body sculpting, body modification and boundriless textiles, this project was created in partnership with 125 Creative. The studio has an established relationship with Philips Design, Eindhoven where we have worked as part of their innovative Probes Collective under the direction of Clive Van Heerden; projects include Skin Dresses, Fractal Living Jewellery and more recently The Biological Age. Our clients and research partners include Wayne McGregor’s R-Research Random Dance, EMI | Regal Recordings, The Wellcome Trust and Kingston University London where Studio Nancy Tilbury’s principle directs a newly established innovative MA Fashion programme.

Our most recent work Fashion Phreaking sees Studio Nancy Tilbury develop a unique methodology for side-grading denim. Giving fast fashion an extended lifecycle as integrated soft technologies reform streetwear. Through playful interactions we embed intimate technologies blending social media and fashion design.
Studio Nancy Tilbury works as a creative consultancy collaborating with our clients to develop pioneering media and materiality for leading and bespoke fashion, sportswear, streetwear, technology and science brands. Working both inline and tran-seasonally our unique knowledge brings smart fabrics expertise to market as well as creating critical brand positioning and communication for the fashioning of science and technologies.
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source: bienalelt

Looking toward the year 2050 interdisciplinary fashion designer Nancy Tilbury has teamed up with visual artists at 125 Creative to produce the provocative fashion futures film “Digital Skins / Body Atmospheres”.“Cloud Dress” is part of this and is made of gas and nano-electronic particles using micro-cosmetic technologies instead of the usual static fabrication methods. The tailoring and cosmetics are constructed by 3D liquid formations that include technologies that are imbibed to stimulate the senses, both cerebral and physical. Showing the body in motion in the film further engages with the fluid nature of the textile medium.
Predictions are put forth that in the future the world of couture will be ‘grown’ as a biological entity to metamorphose and develop for ‘couture culture’. Hybrid ‘skins’ (with skin being the largest organ of the human body) are designed and technological ‘atmospheres’ invade and surround. Nancy Tilbury imagines that in 2050 “couture will be cultured and farmed as fashion facets of human flesh”.
Ideas of materiality are questioned and challenged in Nancy Tilbury’s work. The actual model for the visionary garment “Cloud Dress” uses prosthetics, smoke and dry ice as a textile. Incorporated software is programmed to animate the release of gas from the dress by way of an integrated piping system. The ‘textile’ spreads out and over the audience and in addition, light and projections are used as fabrics that also engulf the viewer, fashion extends beyond the individual and into the environment.
Nancy Tilbury, who is Course Director of the MA in Fashion at Kingston University, is trained in fashion but has also worked in many different sectors including the world of textiles, performance sportswear, science, advanced materials and sophisticated technologies. She embodies wearable technology and results in smart, intelligent and responsive works. Such explorations necessitate collaboration, something Nancy Tilbury is open to and actively embraces. She has worked with Philips Design on many conceptual and strategic design projects and the conjunction of where body and fashion meet is of particular interest. She is interested in our inter-relationships, our emotions and our representations, all of which are scrutinised and relayed. Central to her practice is the idea of a personal narrative seen against “a coherent background of culture, location and time”.
Intimate and soft technologies have been explored and connections firmly implanted between the body as skin a receptor and fashion as clothing and expressor. “Digital Skins / Body Atmospheres” and “Cloud Dress” in particular typify Nancy Tilbury’s creative work. Acutely aware of emerging societal trends and lifestyles, she has her eye very keenly on the future. This High Density digital film demonstrates a clear narrative of such a future where textiles will not have clear boundaries, but rather venture beyond them.