Dream Sequences1999

As Myrvold resolved to move beyond the traditional fashion system, the possibilities afforded by cyberspace began to appeal to her more and more. Myrvold’s fascination with multimedia and information technologies led her to the interactive potential of the Internet. Web interactivity, though still dependent on photo-based media, made a new information-based approach to fashion possible.  The Internet had enabled Myrvold to establish a forum in which to merge fashion with ideas reflecting art, architecture, philosophy and music, and it also allowed her to operate outside the traditional fashion system.  The joint launch of the Cybercouture collection and the www.cybercouture.com website was held at The Web Bar in Paris. Presented as Edition #7 in the ‘Clothes as Publishing’ series, it was entitled Dream Sequences.  Cybercouture’s genesis resulted from Myrvold’s mission to circulate the ideas behind her collections - essential to grasping what each garment represents - simultaneously with the clothes. It also gave her a means of confronting unethical workshop conditions and beauty ideals, rather than working within the system that reinforces them.  ‘My challenge was to have the freedom to design the type of clothes I wanted and compete within the system without promoting its ideals’, she said.  Because she set up the interactive design studio at short notice, Myrvold ran out of time to manufacture ready-made garments to print on. She quickly solved the problem by buying standard-sized hospital scrubs and workwear, which she took apart and prepared for printing. Dream Sequences featured a selection of prints accompanied by a corresponding short film and a soundtrack.  These were based on 16 statements selected from visionaries such as Lao Tzu, Jesus Christ, Hildegard Von Bingen, Francis Bacon, Le Corbusier, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.  The success of Dream Sequences made Myrvold realise that a truly interdisciplinary audience could be reached by linking web technology to her collections.  ‘The web had none of the limitations of other media, she said. ‘Sound, image, film, text, or voice could overlap freely and create new contexts.’  The Internet provided a stable platform that could be updated for each collection, requiring only that Myrvold upload new garment designs and new prints each season. Visitors could scan through each new collection quickly, and with a click and a drag of the mouse, decide how they’d like their choices put together. Each garment was initially displayed in white; once selected, the image rotated three- dimensionally to display the garment’s construction and detail. Visitors browsed among the current range of prints and dragged them onto the garment to get a scaled view of how the pattern looked. Some garments even featured several different prints; for example, the sleeves were made in one print, and the body was made in another.  It was also possible to order the garments online. Each order included the precise measurements of the client, as each piece would be made to measure.  The orders would be emailed to the centralised workshop, where the garments would be cut according to specification, then printed with the selected patterns. Skilled craftspeople would then sew the garments together and ship them to the clients more or less immediately. Because the clothing would only be printed on demand, Myrvold wouldn’t run the risk of overproducing, which would, in turn, save resources and reduce environmental waste.  The most radical part of Myrvold’s interactive ethos was actually her decision to allow the web visitor to complete the design. Myrvold conceived her garments as a ‘blank canvas’ that would draw the wearer into her design process by enabling them to create their own garment within the range of materials she provided. Giving the wearer direct involvement in the construction process and access to the concepts underpinning it makes the interactive platform a hands-on creative process that dislocates the immediacy that characterises fashion.  It also invokes questions of authorship, where the designer no longer assumes responsibility for the finished product. As a new fashion culture emerges, the idea that fashion can be a communicative device as well as an interactive platform in itself is driving both its physical and virtual components forward.