FASHION & TECHNOLOGY (3)

By Eva Fydrych

Ying Gao

'Walking City' dress by Ying Gao (Photo courtesy of the designer)

Montreal-based fashion designer and professor at UQAM, Ying Gao, uses advanced technology sensors to create unique interactive garments. Her dresses move as if they re breathing, inflated by hidden pneumatic pumps in response to approaching viewers, or curl and unfurl in reaction to light.

'Walking City' dress by Ying Gao (Photo courtesy of the designer)

Walking City

Videos courtesy of Ying Gao

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

Montreal-based fashion designer and professor at UQAM, recipient of the Phyllis-Lambert Design Montral Grant, Ying Gao questions our assumptions about clothing by combining urban design, architecture and multimedia. She explores the construction of the garment, taking her inspiration from the transformations of the social and urban environment. She is the only fashion designer included by the British magazine Wallpaper in its Canadian Top 40. Recognized worldwide, her designs are frequently shown in museums and galleries. Design is the medium, situated in the technological rather than in the textile realm. Sensory technologies allow garments to become more playful and interactive. Ying Gao explores both the status of the individual, whose physical contours are transformed by external interferences, and the garments function as a fragile protective space. Her work testifies to the profound mutation of the world in which we live and carries with it a radical critical dimension that transcends technological experimentation.

Source: Ying Gao