FASHION DESIGNERS NEWLY ENTERING THE DIGITAL REALM
Beate Karlsson scanned by David Cash
3D & 2D SCANNER ART by DAVID CASH
Stevie Crowne
Stevie Crowne is a 26 years old emerging designer, born and raised in Canada, that established his own eponymous brand in London. His designs are up-cycled from existing vintage garments, as well as produced from the scratch with the goal of providing a sustainable, accessible and intersectional brand.
VS: What is the unique selling point of your brand?
SC: I strive to create an entirely inclusive brand that would fit all budgets and all sizes, also providing customization for each piece of clothing.
VS: To what extent do you use technology in your designs?
SC: With the use of Adobe Photoshop, I create seasonal logos for my runway graphics, but also the mock-ups for his garments in order to visually represent my first ideas, and then he would post them on social media for the commissions. I strongly believe that 42 the digital world of social media like Clubhouse and Instagram played the biggest role in the growth of my brand, as it helped me to connect with people from the fashion industry and reach out to his clients all over the world.
VS: What were the sources of inspiration for your recent collection?
SC: My inspirational figures for this collection are Thierry Mugler, Lady Gaga (especially the Cromatica album), Jean-Paul Gautier and Gareth Pugh for their futuristic post-apocalyptical style. The main focus of the recent “The Genesis Cultura” collection is how to break free from the simulated virtual world we roughly shifted into during the pandemic. I hope that he will be able to socialize and be able to look at people’s eyes in real life very soon. However, in my opinion, as everything will slowly come back to the normal reality, most people would prefer to remain inside the digital life for whom the physical commodities are less important.
One of Stevie Crowne’s signature Crowns from his latest collection.
Felipe Fialo
Felipe Fialo is 37 years old sustainable accessories and footwear designer and industrial designer from Ecuador. After graduating BA in Industrial Designer at the Universidad de Chile, Felipe was working for the past twelve years with the communities of artisans and craftsmen, but three years ago he decided to shift into the fashion industry and undertake a Masters in Luxury Accessories Design & Management plus the Digital Textiles course at Fabricademy at the Massachusett Institute of Technology (MIT). With the goal as a designer to elevate society in terms of design experience and sustainability, his eponymous shoe brand is mainly focused on how to successfully combine digital fabrication, biology and luxury design to introduce new more sustainable ways of production.
VS: Do you believe that this recent move into the digital world can really boost up the level of sustainability?
FF: Definitely. But for my “WE GO FAR” collection design is not the goal. Fashion can be definitely used as a tool that can make a change in the world. The combination of design with the new concept of human interaction with nature can regenerate the future where we bring a new understanding of sustainability and the importance of coexisting with nature. For example, the Crystal Walk shoes are made with real crystals naturally growing and sticking to the surface of the shoe without the use of glue. Another model Pucci is created from a mushroom leather made out of mycelium fungi that would grow around the shoes, and these methods taught us how to mix together two aesthetics of manmade and natural.
VS: What digital platforms and software do you utilize in order to create your designs?
FF: I design the 3D models using Rhino and Grasshopper for parametric design, and then most of the time I use Photoshop and Illustrator - the whole Adobe suite is the most important for me. In addition, there is Blender platform that is much easier to utilize when it comes to organic shapes in 3D.
VS: How did you get interested in sustainability?
Initially, I come from a country where the idea of smart use of resources surrounded me, so I always thought about how I can interpret the most beautiful features of nature while avoiding transformation and using the minimum production processes. When I arrived in Italy, I managed to collect a lot of leather waste and utilize it in luxury products. The challenge with the leather waste is that it is barely possible to up-cycle, so I had to find a creative way of how to utilize it. I collaborated with the luxury leather company, scanned the skin of the animal, combine together digital fabrication with the concept of upgrading and this process allowed me to create new leather made out of digital and leather waste.
VS: Where do you see the future fashion production evolving?
FF: I believe that circularity and digital fabrication will be the next step after we go through the bio-future, which is the mixture of biology and design, and eco future, which is the concepts like zero-waste mentality and up-cycling. It’s really the time for us now to adapt to a more sustainable production: only last year around 24 billion shoes were manufactured, and that is 3 shoes per person! And the problem is that most of these shoes cannot be destroyed because they are made out of different materialities, so we as the industry should strive to produce the shoes out of monometric materials. Last but not least, the use of technologies will minimize the number of products utilized, as 3D design will change the use of atoms (physical materials like textile) to bits (digital fabrication).
Shoe designs by Felipe Fialo Scanned by Micol Biondi & David Cash
Beate Karlsson
Beate Karlsson is a 26 years old multidisciplinary artist and designer originally born in Stockholm, Sweden. She finished her design degree at Parsons School of Design and Central Saint Martins, and recently she works as a creative director of AVAVAV Firenze and as a designer at Pyer Moss. Her aesthetics are formed from her love for DIY culture and her curiosity from childhood, as she always used to discover and observe different objects, their shapes and materials. Now as a designer, Beate’s goal is to define a new meaning for everything she designs, treating her creations as organic living organisms “with soles and hearts.”
VS: What is AVAVAV’s approach to being a sustainability-conscious brand?
BK: We, as a brand…
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