Cutting-edge interactive skirt made up of Lumia 1520 smartphones hits London Fashion Week 2014.
Nokia is no stranger to the fashion world. Last year, we teamed up with photography legends, Bruce Weber and David Bailey. We gave them the Lumia 1020 to capture their interpretation of “an intimate human in a distant world”. The results were quite special.
Now, Lumia will be starring at London Fashion Week 2014 putting Lumia in the hands of fashion royalty. Or, on fashion royalty, should we say.
In partnership with designers and Fashion Fringe winners, Fyodor Golan, Nokia has created the world’s first interactive smart skirt made up of Nokia Lumia 1520 smartphones (80 to be precise), each sporting a 20MP PureView camera and 6-inch screen.
As the skirt moves, images on the screens change colour, creating a synchronised shimmering effect that emulates real-world fabric. To form this illusion, a bespoke app was conceived that employs GPS technology to align the wearer’s movements with the skirt’s sparkle.
Via a camera in the model’s cap, the mosaic-style imagery will change from the Fyodor Golan AW Collection to a visual representation of the model’s surroundings.
KIN, who worked with Fyodor Golan, described the dress as: “a wearable and experimental piece of technology”, continuing: “we’ve designed and programmed tiled video walls, and developed mobile apps, as well as bespoke special camera apps, but nothing quite like this.”
KIN employed a combination of sketched drawings, 3D-printing, and Python and C# programming languages to build the skirt.
When KIN was asked what was it about the Nokia Lumia 1520 that enticed them to create the dress:
“We’ve worked with Nokia on imaging projects in the past and we’ve always been impressed with the engineering know-how that’s gone into the development of the camera technology – from PureView software to Carl Zeiss lenses.”
“Secondly, it was the opportunity to work with Windows. We’ve developed on lots of platforms over the years, but by far the most technology we’ve built is for desktop PC’s running Windows. The opportunity to develop for the mobile version opened up interesting new possibilities for us.”
Of the new collection and the collaboration, Fyodor said:
“All my life I’ve had Nokia phones and I love them for being easy! They have a great design aesthetic.
“This A/W 14 season we toyed with tradition against technology. We believe that you can create almost anything that isn’t influenced by gravity.
“The colour changes as the skirt moves and the idea of making the screens react to the word around it via photographs and video is something that we do not think has been done before.”
This unique project is about exploring the possibilities of smart technology and fashion coming together, as well as supporting new talent to create something special using the beautifully designed Nokia Lumia 1520.
Click here to see stunning images of the interactive dress, captured with the award-winning 41MP Nokia Lumia 1020.
