cybercouture

the bridge

CLOTHES AS PUBLISHING EDITION # 8

Cybercouture.com Clothes as Publishing edition # 8 the bridge

COVER IMAGES: «THE MAKING OG EVE» BY PIA MYRVOLD / NEVINS DURET

THE NAVIGATION OF CYBERCOUTURE.COM IN INTUITIVE AND EXPLORATIVE.The Contributors

In every edition of cybercouture I try to work on a conceptthat unifies the differences and points of view of the contributors. This time it is "The Bridge," a place or a space I want to define where different past experiences are gathered, in a moment, into a future we still do not understand. What I seek is the creative potential, in culture,in human kind, and the people that practice the search forcreative potential in their respective domains -- in theirown world and in our collective world. Two pillars of thisBridge are Karim Rashid and Nile Rodgers, artists who consistently show us the possibilities, and who are lessworried about limitations. They are working in and onthe communication and the sharing of ideas, acrossboundaries, across nationality or opinion, they simplybelieve in joy as a way to unify us all. Virtually, this Bridge is open to everyone, we just need to take part.

Pia Myrvold

Cybercouture.com presents the new edition of its publishing series “The Bridge” in New York and Paris this fall, 2002. Pia Myrvold, the

founder, artistic director and head designer has put together anincredible team for all the different aspects of this production.

The main collaboration is with Karim Rashid for a collection ofthree parts: Hypermix, Slow Tech and Cyberware.The music for the show is made together with Nile Rodgers,and the three tracks correspond to the parts of the collection.The music will be presented in the multimedia presentation and

videos in the editorial section of the site.In this booklet author Bradley Quinn has written an article about

cybercouture; fashion and technolgy.The development of the website’s Interactive Design Studio is made

together with Phil Wood and Spill of Paris; the animations are made in collaboration with Nevins Duret.

The video images for the show and corresponding music clip is edited with Obie Benz.

The graphic design of this booklet is by Laurent Laborie and Gunhild Vaaland.The printing of this booklet is done in Norway by Bryne Offset.

Editor’s note

CCyber

HYPERMIX CYBERWARE & SLOW TECH

About the collectionCybercouture Spring Summer 2003is divided in three themes.Hypermix and Cyberware are usinginnovative tools and technologies toproduce highly complicated prints.Break-throughs in small-batch digital printing to fabric andinnovative methods of customiza-tion permit cybercouture’s couturiers to assemble unique garments. This allows for a collection of highly individual prints,draped on the body, like a sculptureor art piece, which can be producedon a per-order basis. It offers acompletely new level of quality toconsumers: one-of-a-kind coutureat ready-to-wear prices. Slow Tech is called as suchbecause it uses normal productiontechniques. It is a complementaryjeans collection, with details thatderive from Karim Rashid’sIconographs. All cuts is designed by Pia Myrvold

CYBERCOUTURE BY PIA MYRVOLD / KARIM RASHID IMAGES: KARIM RASHID

Karim Rashid is an IndustrialDesigner. His perspective andclients are global and he considers himself a pluralistdoing projects ranging fromproducts, interiors, fashion, furniture, lighting, and artinstallations. He received abachelor of Industrial Design inCanada and Postgraduatestudies in Italy. He worked for seven years atKAN Industrial Design anddesigned the Babel FashionCollection. In 1993 he openedhis own studio in New York Citywith clients such as Prada,Issey Miyake, YSL, Umbra,Nambé, Magis, Edra, Frighetto,Herman Miller, Sony, Idee,

Shiseido, Giorgio Armani, Leonardo,Totem, Nienkamper, Yahoo,Zerodisegno, among others. He haswon many awards including the 2001Canadian Design Hero Award, 1999George Nelson Award, PhiladelphiaMuseum of Art Collab Award 1999,Daimler Chrysler Award 1999,Brooklyn Museum of Art DesignerAward 1998. His work is in Permanent collectionsof 14 Museums and is publishedinternationally. He exhibits art atSandra Gering Gallery and DeitchProjects in New York. He was anassociate Professor in IndustrialDesign for 10 years and also writesfor many design periodicals. His newmonograph is ‘I Want to Change theWorld‘ (Rizzoli, 2001).

Karim Rashid

DIGITAL FILES FROM THE HYPERMIX COLLECTION BY PIA MYRVOLD / KARIM RASHID.

DIGITAL FILES FROM THE HYPERMIX COLLECTION BY PIA MYRVOLD / KARIM RASHID.

Cybercouture.com is constantly researching new and innovative ways to produce and distribute fashion, as well as ways to keep artistic and design qualities intact in each garment.

These files show how all the graphics are designed before being printed to fabric in small and customizable batches. Adjustment to patterns and size are done digitally before the fabric is printed.

DIGITAL FILES FROM THE CYBERWARE COLLECTION BY KARIM RASHID.

DIGITAL FILES FROM THE DIGITAL NATURE PROJECT: KARIM RASHID / WOLF GORDON.

The Interactive Design Studio isa fashion tool created by PiaMyrvold as part of her work asa fashion designer. Pia Myrvoldbelieves that clients today see areason to be involved in the cre-ative process of design, andshe links the content of the artprojects developed in cybercou-ture as palettes, where a clientcan pick their favorite artist orcontributor and co-sign theirown design. In this edition,there is one dress, with 3palettes, 5 sizes, two necklinesand two dress lengths. All in allthat offers about 18,000 uniquepossibilities in the atelier. Theambition of cybercouture is toadd more shapes and palettesfrom diverse talents and toincorporate smart, electronic orintelligent fibers. It is not haute-couture, it’s cybercouture! P

ALETTE HYPERMIX BY KARIM RASHID

: the interactive design studioCybercouture.com

PALETTE CITY IDENTITY BY PIA MYRVOLD

Cybercouture will go online this fall atwww.cybercouture.com, an interactive websitewhere fashionistas can select prototype gar-ments and create their own customisedwardrobes. Each Cybercouture garment is ini-tially displayed in white for visitors to drag fab-ric prints onto, rendering a scaled view of howthe pattern will appear. Garments can even

feature several different motifs - the sleevescan be made in one print and the body inanother. Once the selections have beenmade, clients include their measurements andemail their orders to the Cybercouture work-shop, where skilled craftspeople make thegarments according to specification and shipthem almost immediately. As Cybercoutureexpands to include a selection of ready-to-wear separates in the beginning of 2003,these will be available in the boutique sectionof the website.

Cybercouture is a fashion collection, but it isalso interactive project. Through cybercou-ture.com Myrvold has established a platformin which to merge fashion with ideas reflectingart, architecture, theory and music. The web-site’s editorial space encourages a critical dia-logue reflecting a wide range of issues, creat-ing a forum where prominent artists, writers,musicians and theorists can communicatetheir ideas visually through the patterns and

The manifesto of fashion’s future could havebeen written by Pia Myrvold, whose collec-tions turn the icons of modern technology intowearable couture. For her spring/summer2003 collection, ‘The Bridge’, Myrvold collabo-rates with Karim Rashid to launch three prêt-a-porter labels: Hypermix, Slow Tech andCyberware. ‘The Bridge’ is the eighth editionof Myrvold’s ongoing ‘Clothes as Publishing’project and features a range of Rashid’sdesign motifs against a quadraphonic back-ground of Nile Rodger’s sound compositions.Myrvold is originally from Norway and estab-lished her interactive design studio in Paris;‘The Bridge’ is characterised by theScandinavian simplicity and Parisian tailoringthat have become her design signature. Thecollection features a distinctive utilitarian andfuturistic prêt-a-porter line that blurs theboundaries between street style and formalattire, meeting the needs of the everyday

casual wardrobe.

The interactive possibilities of the Internet andthe multi-media potentials of fashion inspiredMyrvold to inject clothing with the technologi-cal innovations of the twenty-first centurylifestyle. Through exploring the synergybetween digital video, electronic music andcomputer-aided design, Myrvold pioneers newrelationships between fashion and technologythat creates new information-based approach-es to clothing. This departure from conven-tional fashion circulates the concepts behindeach collection simultaneously with theclothes, generating an understanding of eachgarment’s value beyond the wearability of itsdesign.

Myrvold is best known in North America forher Cybercouture collection, launched at theautumn/winter 2001 New York Fashion Week.

Cybercouture: Fashion and Technologyby Bradley Quinn

Internet technology and digital design are thenewest and perhaps the most innovative man-ifestations of fashion to take shape in the con-temporary world. Cyberspace holds the poten-tial to be an extraordinary landscape ofdesigner collections that lead the fashionestablishment in a fresh direction. Though itmay take time to transcend traditional designmethods and presentation platforms, thefuture direction for fashion seems destined tounfold in an interactive environment. As tech-nology evolves, visionaries like Pia Myrvoldcontinue to engineer connections and inter-faces that promise to bring the fashion worldonline for good.

Bradley Quinn is a British writer and journalist who hasworked as a contributing editor for publications on bothsides of the Atlantic. He is the author of ‘Chinese Style’and his books ‘Techno Fashion’ and ‘The Fashion ofArchitecture’ will be released by Berg Publishers in2003.

motifs that feature on the clothing. The gar-ment’s manufacturers work in state-of-the-artdesign studios rather than in the sweatshopconditions known throughout most of theindustry, also contributing to the designprocess by engaging with the ideas behindeach collection’s theme.

This method draws the wearer closer into thedesign process, reducing the traditionaldegree of separation between designer andconsumer. The wearer’s direct involvement inthe garment’s construction turns the interac-tive platform into a hands-on creative process,inverting the traditional principle of authorshipas the designer no longer assumes fullresponsibility for the finished product. Part ofthis process dislocates the immediacy thatcharacterises contemporary fashion, givingthe wearer a means of gradually customisingtheir wardrobe according to specific tastes.While conventional fashion restricts the wear-er to a few ranges of mass-produced looks

and limited sizing, Myrvold’s approachemphasises individuality. Cybercouturedesigns are made to suit a broader range ofbody types and shapes than those currentlydictated by conventional beauty ideals.

ICONOGRAPHICS BY KARIM RASHID

Music is my bridge to a world that has becomegreater than the wildest fantasies of my youth.

Like in the film "el Topo" I learned what was in the souls of great masters through music. It's shown me the soul of Nelson Mandela in a SOHO restaurant as well as Screaming Jay Hawkins backstage at the Apollo theater. I've felt the misery of impoverished peoples and decimated cultures revive their spirits through the simple act of song.

Even a fixed bridge is not static, it vibratesfrom the motion of those who dare venture across.My bridge has crossed me over into an inner world of self reflection with endless questions and infinite answers. What's on the other side? Are we there yet? How long is it? How many died building it?

How many thrive because of it? One day I crossed a bridge to

the world of Pia Myrvold. Let's see where this takes me.

Nile Rodgers DIGITAL IMAGE «THE MAKING OF THE EYE» BY PIA MYRVOLD / NEVINS DURET

I talk with all my mates,I shape the scape, the Pleasurscape

And connect the virtual gatesLondon, Tokyo, Milan, New York

All the cites are one in my eyes,People, places, nature, thingsIt is a single cultural paradiseBeauty in the cites, Flexible inside,Soft and colorful, A RAPTUROUS place to hide I want to love all the time, Love

everyone in our biosphere Keep the thought powerful Without shedding a tear Sensual romantic world,a physical and digital rebirth,elevating our collective pleasureOne church, one mirth A casual worldwe will be, Like Atlantis in the sky and

the sea,One global BRIDGE we will see

Karim Rashid

Space extends itself via organicmodules of repetition,a continuum of surfacebased on an voxel compositionAll the notions of objects as singularare dispelled replaced by anenvironment rising out of the ground,tomorrow??s world is gelledThe continuous white fieldsurrounded by an aura of fluores-cence, to allude to the world oftechnology from a digital excrescence,new vistas form our daily convalescence Inevitably our entirelandscape will merge and connectbody and space fuse, Object andenvironment, No obstacles, just a collective muse City and town, Water and ground,Highway to highway, being to being.A world worth seeing

I communicate with the ether

GLOBAL BRIDGING

I travel everydayWhether I leave or not,ENGAGING the worldLike a virtual astronautI talk in my languagea visual rappinghood,a very secretive argot,that I try to make understood

To bring meaning to everyone, To design

democratic, Words createobjects. Objects speak words

THAT ARE NOT AUTOMATICI see a non-stop amorphous

plastiscape that denotes a world with no boundary, fluid and transforming,

evolving, morphing, an alchemic foundryThe freedom of material The metals of fission Transformable,A digital vision

Pia Myrvold is a multimedia artist, born in Norway. She has worked with painting, installation, sculpture, musicand video, beside using fashion as a media among herother expressions. In 1994 she was invited to show her firstcollection on the Official Calendar of Syndicale desCreateurs des Modes, in Paris, and has since shown 14 collections in Paris, exploring fashion and it’s possibilities as a new media and cultural and artistic expression. In 1997 she registered the domain name cybercouture.comas a result of her project “Clothes as Publishing”. She has since launched the first interactive design collection“Dada Memory” in 1998 and the first interactive design studio in cybercouture.com in 1999 with “DreamSequences.” Her various works with video, painting, installation and cybercouture has frequently been exhibitedin major museums and galleries around the world. She wrote and staged an interactive children play;“Paintbox” in Norway, 2001 and is currently working on anew stage play “Female Interfaces” based on interactiveclothes and programmation of space. T

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Pia MyrvoldEntering

In betweenNeither here

Not thereTime SuspenceFolds or drapesYouthful mindVisit the Ephemeral BodyFuturasmic IntelligenceIt is in The interface

Coolness OceanWashes Of chemicals

DissolutionsDissolvents

Erasing The fixedInspiring Movement

Liquid InterpretationsLucidity

Culture the bridgeSeeing the invisible

being the visibleit is in the crossing

Pia Myrvold

cybercouture.com