The Visual & The Virtual
Digitally driven and fashion-forward Taiwanese designer Claudia Wang debuted her SS24 collection as part of September’s London Fashion Week. With a background in fashion and interactive design, Wang’s 2020 borne brand made its mark by marrying the designer’s two passions for the visual and the virtual, to create a hyper-immersive display of design.
Held in a contemporary art gallery in Central London, Wang’s designs were showcased by a myriad of models on elevated plinths, simultaneously surrounded by a screen that exhibited Wang’s very own video-game world. Preternatural, feline avatars inspired by the 12 creatures of the Eastern zodiac signs floated in digital iterations of the garments across the screens, mimicking those worn by the models in the physical showcase space.
For Wang, the virtual worlds of video games are spaces to inspire individual creative thought, and one she hopes to express the importance of through her designs. With a plethora of patterns and palettes, the collection is anything but conventional. The unique blend of clashing colours countered and complemented by geometric explosions has crafted a collection that is completely unpredictable and unfamiliar to her audience. Through the complexity of the creations, Wang carefully challenges her audience’s perceptions of fashion and art as they traditionally know it, playing into her desire for her audience to desert the safe spaces of humanity and find beauty and originality in the digital “beyond”.
Wang’s incredibly immersive use of time and space is central to creating an atmosphere conducive to the surrealist nature of her creations. The audience is part of Wang’s game; their real-life presence, enveloped by her simulation, sings to Wang’s wish for them to find freedom and excitement in and amongst the virtual. The only reminder of reality, the naturalistic symbol of the temporal rose, is threaded throughout.
But Wang’s collection is as much an experience as it is a lesson. Whilst a creative playground, the digital dimensions in which Wang dwells are also one that comments on the often negatively perceived influence of AI on artistry. Using technology to create digital versions of her designs prior to their physical manufacture, Wang reduces the brand’s material waste, moulding a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future for fashion. As such, Wang’s collection argues AI’s ability to enhance artistry, where it can and should, be utilised as a technological tool for fashion design and creation.
Claudia Wang’s collection is one characterised by craft and imagination. Playfully persuasive, Wang’s gamification of fashion is refreshingly forward-thinking and unique in a time during which discussions of digital danger are rife. Her ability to both merge and segregate the “real” and the “digital” through fashion and technology is an art form in itself and is an exciting experience that most may find difficult to forget.