These are some of the words I frantically tapped into my iPhone notes during Fyodor Golan's stunning London Fashion Week presentation: 'tender, ferocious, glitchy, primal, diverse'. The words hit me in digital waves, a helpful metaphor for a presentation that opened with a CGI film in collaboration with Miximaliste that cast avatar models hovering above water and interacting with each other in a sensual and glitchy way, creating a warm and poetic narrative about nature, technology and design. This piece of CGI fashion film art, entitled 'Change of Paradigm' portrays a fantasy world described in the show notes as "an artificial FG paradise", and is the first step in Fyodor Golan's journey to fully digital design and specification of garments pre-sampling, removing the need to toile. Ultimately, they would no longer sketch the designs and make a paper pattern and mock up a the garment in fabric - this would be done digitally - streamlining and speeding up their design and development process and allowing their creativity to run wild. This new digital process will also enable Fyodor Golan to create seasonal experiences, testing the relationship between fashion, fantasy and reality.
Fyodor Golan X Miximaliste 'Change of Paradigm'
The multicoloured avatars gave way to a live presentation of the SS17 collection on models packing a serious punch that left the marks primal, attitude and fearlessness in their wake. This was an expression of the beauty of diversity as much as it was about fashion, technology and new presentation formats. Fyodor Golan are pushing all sorts of boundaries - I viewed their presentation twice to take it all in. A fashion journalist from the Czech Republic was enjoying his third viewing when we struck up a conversation.
Amongst my aforementioned frantically typed notes I also wrote 'so much direction here', which, simplistic as it is, serves to remind me that the strength of vision in the film-making, use of colour, styling, casting, set design and sound made this presentation a force of fashion, technology and nature. The collection is an extension of pre-SS17, which I wrote about previously, with its inspiration rooted in holographic pop star Hatsune Miku, making their avatar model concept a 'natural' extension their pre-season inspiration.
Fyodor Golan SS17
The hybrid hiking trainers by Salomon led me to imagine place where these models might scale epic heights, conquering the next frontier of fashion tech and leading an intrepid journey forward into digital fashion's future. I can't wait to see how Fyodor Golan bend tech to their will to present the next installation on their fashion tech journey.
Golan Frydman, Fyodor Podgorny and a presentation guest, backstage
Show Credits
Stylist: Tati Cotliar
Collection Manager: Billie McKenna
Video Direction: Fyodor Golan
Video Animation: Thomas Makryniotis for Miximaliste
Show Production: NP+CO
Video Production: Miximaliste
Hair: Syd Hayes for Babyliss Pro
Makeup: Andrew Gallimore and Team @ CLM using Maybelline NY
Nails: Sabrina Gayle using Orly
Shoes: Salomon
Music Director: Rohan Budd
PR: Village
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All photos by Techstyler
First published on Techstyler.fashion
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