Even in difficult and unpredictable times like the present, the future always seems promising.
Sci-fi Fashion style is so popular, Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator of fashion and material culture at the Brooklyn Museum, said, “Perhaps it is our wish to envision some type of utopian world, where the precision of numbers is realized as a visual purity.”
On the fall 2024 runways, it made a strong comeback, as seen at Rick Owens, Junya Watanabe, Dion Lee, and Louis Vuitton. At the glass pavilion venue, eerie headlights hung overhead, resembling UFOs scouting a landing area.
A lot of Sci-fi Fashion designers also gave a nod to the original Space Age designers of the 1960s, such Rudi Gernreich, Paco Rabanne, André Courrèges, and Pierre Cardin, by showcasing what could be called retro-futuristic looks.
Other designers and businesses that are sometimes or sometimes not linked to a dystopian or hopeful futuristic aesthetic are Balenciaga, Mugler, Fendi, Coperni, and Iris Van Herpen.
In an interview, Yokobosky stated, “There are multiple futures in terms of aesthetics, such as a minimalist Jil Sander world and a post-industrial Rick Owens ‘Bladerunner’-esque world, and the huge blur between the extremes.” “The 1960s era is timeless and a constant in fashion design in our modern time zone.”
“Cashmere spacesuits to wear in a concrete spaceship” is how Owens described his autumn 2024 ensemble. I’ve been promoting that aesthetic for a very long time.
In actuality, Owens’s interest in future images dates back to his early years, when he was playing with Lego as his father read aloud books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of “Tarzan,” such as “A Princess of Mars” and “The Moon Maid.”
The cover artwork by Frank Frazetta, which “had this glam carnality that stuck with me: flying hair, lots of muscles, and Jugendstil-ish jewelry on half-naked princesses and jeweled monsters,” is clearly remembered by him.
Actually, Owens’s fascination with futuristic imagery goes all the way back to his early childhood, when he was reading books written by “Tarzan” creator Edgar Rice Burroughs aloud, including “A Princess of Mars” and “The Moon Maid,” while he played with Legos.
He obviously remembers the Frank Frazetta cover artwork, which “had this glam carnality that stuck with me: flying hair, lots of muscles, and Jugendstil-ish jewelry on half-naked princesses and jeweled monsters.”
From the Egyptians to the Incas to the Italian futurists Sci-fi Fashion of the early 20th century to any nation that has created a program to explore space beyond Earth today, he added, “I think it would be fair to say that every age has had its dreamers.”
As Yokobosky put it, “all sought to create new approaches to dressing in the era defined by NASA, when everyone thought a new future was beginning — as if the world of ‘The Jetsons’ was going to be our reality in short measure.” This included Cardin, Courrèges, Gernreich, Rabanne, and Larry LeGaspi, who served as the inspiration for a 2019 Rick Owens collection.
Van Herpen took inspiration for her latest collection from the futuristic Sci-fi Fashion pavilions and laboratories designed by French oceanographer and architect Jacques Rougerie, which were partially submerged.
The Dutch Sci-fi Fashion designer stated in an interview that “the future always represents this free space that has a lot of magnetism towards my own imagination.” Though not everything from the past is known, there is still a lot you can do to shape the future. It truly expands my creative horizons.
Sci-fi Fashion
Van Herpen emphasized, however, that while the past has had a significant influence, she is not overly fixated on science fiction. Thus, I believe that their mutual influence is a discourse. That truly inspires me, in my opinion.
For the designer, who has always combined cutting-edge processes like silicon molding and 3D printing with conventional couture techniques, technology is an additional crucial component.
“There are important warnings as well as beautiful imagination about how technology can be used in a lot of science fiction stories,” the speaker stated. “I think we always have a tendency to faith in progress. Thus, we frequently have a sort of innate trust in technology to improve our lives. However, we must exercise caution in how we use it.
Van Herpen emphasized, however, that while the past has had a significant influence, she is not overly fixated on science fiction. Thus, I believe that their mutual influence is a discourse. That truly inspires me, in my opinion.
For the Sci-fi Fashion designer, who has always combined cutting-edge processes like silicon molding and 3D printing with conventional couture techniques, technology is an additional crucial component.
“There are important warnings as well as beautiful imagination about how technology can be used in a lot of science fiction stories,” the speaker stated. “I think we always have a tendency to faith in progress. Thus, we frequently have a sort of innate trust in technology to improve our lives. However, we must exercise caution in how we use it.
She went on, “You know, you can use technology very creatively, and obviously, that’s my own focus.” “But we should not ignore the fact that it is also an extremely potent tool for control. That is a very, very dominant aspect.”
Van Herpen draws inspiration from a wide range of topics, such as science, dance, literature, architecture, and nature. Inspired sci-fi literature includes the book series “The Three-Body Problem” and movies such as “Arrival” and “Ghost in the Shell,” where the visual patterns and words are blended together. I find that to be rather lovely.
However, the designer emphasized that without a blend of modern technologies and handmade methods, she could not have achieved her look. It involves more than just the design process. Actually, it’s a process of discovery, she remarked.
Sci-fi Fashion is always about the promise of something — sometimes dystopian, but it could also be a good future, too,” stated Nicolas Ghesquière, a longtime fan of futurism who built sets for his massive Vuitton shows and paraded robot leggings back in his Balenciaga days.
For “heroines of science fiction, but also heroines of the everyday; heroines in the street,” his designs are, in fact, empowering.
Coperni’s DNA is infused with Sci-fi Fashion dreams and cutting-edge technology. In their Paris runway shows, they have showcased Bella Hadid in a spray-on dress, robot dogs from Boston Dynamics, and, for fall 2024, the enigmatic black slab from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” in a show that played on UFOs.
In a Zoom interview, Arnaud Vaillant, who co-founded Coperni with designer Sébastien Meyer, stated, “Sébastien reads the biography of Steve Jobs; he does not read the biography of Christian Dior.”
Meyer interjected, saying, “The essence of our job is to create clothes for the future.” “Predicting the future is what science fiction is all about.”
The creator of Coperni said he doesn’t find it surprising that so many Sci-fi Fashion designers are gravitating toward the future. “With all the crises, conflicts, etc., we live in such a challenging world. We all enjoy science fiction because it allows us to escape from this world. Our desire is to build our own reality and escape reality.
Furthermore, Meyer believes that because the last few years have been so focused on nostalgia and the vintage, fashion is “very late getting into technology and innovation.”
Vaillant claims that there is intense interest in the fusion of Sci-fi Fashion and technology, as seen by the craze on TikTok for Coperni’s most recent, jaw-dropping iteration of its iconic Swipe bag, which uses silica aerogel—a NASA nanomaterial that is basically 99 percent air and 1 percent glass—as evidence.
Three of the conceptual bags, which retail for 15,000 euros and weigh 33 grams, were sold by Coperni.
The autumn 2024 collection by Junya Watanabe, which aims to “express the beauty of the contrast between clothes and sculptures,” appears to unwittingly incorporate futuristic elements.
Indeed, the designer’s exquisite dressmaking and tailoring were surrounded by rigid geometric devices based on square pyramids, tors, and other more amorphous shapes.
The Japanese designer said in an email, “I created this collection with the feeling that it would be beautiful if clothes like this kind of object existed in our daily life—similar to the public art movement that happened in the past.”
