origami

[travolta]

i love origami, unforunately i have very little skill! one of the things about origami is its accessibility and its relation to design, whether it is fashion(in my opinion), architecture, furniture.. paper model folding is the easiest way to create a 3-d realization also its techniques have influenced fashion designers such as issey miyake and is employed by engineers. i also think it is one of the most beautiful artforms..along w/ fashion!

 

[travolta]

BBC Go Digital's Jon Wurtzel casts a wry eye over developments in the world of technology



A new form of interactive fashion has emerged that aims to turn the consumer into the designer.

Shoppers receive a flat rectangular pack


It is called origami fashion and it is being prototyped at the Design Laboratory at the Central Saint Martins School of Art in London, UK.

In origami fashion, a person takes a piece of material and through a series of simple folds, transforms a two-dimensional layer of fabric into a three-dimensional accessory.

Currently, the designs being modelled turn out to be bags suitable for carrying those essentials of a digital lifestyle: MP3 players, digital cameras, etc.

Stylish and different

Origami fashion starts with a question. Shoppers will be asked how they intend to use their product and given three options: listen, play, or shoot. Depending on how they respond to these cryptic options, the shoppers will receive a specific, flat, rectangular pack.

The pack, about 30 centimetres square, looks like a computer chip with a red tab running across the top. When you pull this tab open, a set of instructions along with a piece of fabric spills out of the pack.

After unfolding, the material is transformed into new products


The instructions guide users to fold the fabric in simple, marked ways. After a series of roughly five folds, the material is transformed into new products.

On offer at the moment are a range of stylish bags aimed at different functions. These include a rucksack with a pocket for an MP3 player, a wraparound bag offering easy access to a camera, and a foldout carrier that can hold digital toys and games.

And where bags lead, a range of clothing may also be marketed in the future.

The material is made from a polyester laminate that is strong, durable and does not fray. It is also recyclable. Abstract patterns of computer chips run across the fabric, giving away that Intel is one of the sponsors of the project.

Vending Machines

Currently, the fashion range exists only as a prototype. But, when they do go to market, the Design Laboratory would like to see them delivered in alternative methods, outside of retail shops.

It can be a bag to hold your digital accessories


With the goal of enabling easy and constant access, the lab is thinking about selling them in vending machines. Alongside these machines would be recycle bins where the used products could be discarded.

This fashion range was designed for a European audience, though they may also be launched in America. It may be a few seasons, however, before you can purchase these pouches.

The practicalities of selling recyclable street fashion via vending machines are, unsurprisingly, still being assessed and worked out.

Recyclable fabric

The recycleability of this material affords some interesting opportunities.

In the future you could wear it


It means that users can change their creations from day to day, quickly recycling their old products in exchange for new ones.

The designs can also be easily updated and transformed, yet still emerge from the same piece of recyclable material.

For the Design Laboratory to make good on this promise of recyclable fashion, it will have to demonstrate that this polyester laminate material can be effectively recycled in ways that are environmentally sustainable and cost-effective.

Otherwise, this specific origami fashion risks becoming another trend to be used and discarded with perhaps even greater rapidity than other products.

Digital fashion

The lifestyle aims of this project are clearly targeted towards digital technology.

These are, after all, accessories that are designed to enable people to listen to MP3 music files, take digital photographs, and have easy access to their games, all while on the move.

Digital toys, handhelds and MP3 players have been successfully marketed as trendy, must-have gadgets. More than just digital tools, they have become fashion statements. Now, a new interactive fashion range has been tailored to merge with this digital lifestyle.

 

[travolta]

German designer Gunhild Kranz's dresses and shirts look good there.

By Kristi Cameron
November 2001

Gunhild Kranz (b. 1973) graduated in March from the College of Media and Design in Hannover, Germany. She spent the past year studying in the Department of Textile and Fashion Design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Kranz's diploma project became her first professional commission when Marimekko hired her just days after she graduated. The company included the design in its 50th anniversary exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in Helsinki this summer. Kranz is now working on a spring collection for Marimekko that uses the same technology. In October she will begin a master's program at the Royal College of Art in London.

The idea is so good that it seems familiar. Hasn't Issey Miyake already made travel-friendly clothes with designer wrinkles? Although 28-year-old Gunhild Kranz's new collection for Finnish company Marimekko also incorporates folds as part of the design, she was most concerned that the garments be interesting objects. Her Taitos (Finnish for "foldable") clothes and bags are meant to look as good laid flat as they do on the body. Because they can function as decorative elements in a room, they offer interesting retail display possibilities. Marimekko (which has a patent pending on the technology) introduced Taitos at the CDP Fashion Fair, in Düsseldorf, in August.

I chose the Tasaraita stripes [a Marimekko design from 1968] because I really wanted this idea identified with Marimekko--so that you immediately recognize it as theirs. It is a very traditional pattern from a classic collection; so I used the stripe to produce a new classic piece.

You might not have a dresser or time to unpack, and so you want to create a familiar atmosphere very fast. You can just take your clothes out of the suitcase and display them. It was interesting to do a new thing in clothing, because we have new trends but not really big steps.

Many people have mentioned that it reminds them of Issey Miyake. The folds are part of the design and the way you wear it. I wanted something that is decorative when you wear it, folds and handles easily, and is also decorative when you're not wearing it.

I chose the name Taitos because it's one of the very few Finnish words I know. I really wanted to give it a Finnish name because everything started in Finland--and my inspiration came from the fact that I'm living between there and Germany.

I left Germany and have had to move a lot--10 or 15 times--in the last year. I was fed up with moving everything, getting a new room, and being in a place without personal stuff. I felt that I needed something simple to create a personal atmosphere for myself. The only thing you really need when you travel is clothing. And I figured that probably there are others who have this kind of lifestyle for at least a few years.

I started by experimenting with the normal way of constructing clothing. It wasn't enough just to do it on paper, so I combined fabric draping (on a mannequin) with paper construction. I was also inspired by the folding techniques of origami. When you use material like cotton, you have to use very fine stitching at the fold to keep the form. If you were to use polyester, you could just heat-press it to get a permanent pleat.

http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1101/inp/

 

[tiffany]

great topic & article And the panda is adorable

 

[CaptainJackSparrow]

what a great thread!

 

[travolta]

cool! you should post some of your favorite origami creations! i'm a total nerd..i found this awesome origami website http://www.origami.vancouver.bc.ca/

<-origami cranes!

 

[luxmode]

Wow, I'm really impresssed by the origami you posted travolta...I can't even make a proper crane ! That website is too much!

I came across this info whilst researching Akira Isogawa. Apparently his collection "Living Dolls" was inspired by origami and paper dolls:

Living dolls: from whim to gallery wall

December 2, 2004

A new exhibition tracks the life cycle of Akira Isogawa’s latest collection.

...He was also intrigued in the early stages of this collection, by the complicated origami (the Japanese art of folding paper) art of a man he knew simply as Takahiro. “To me, he is an origami master.” In fact, Takahiro worked for two years as a patternmaker for Isogawa in Sydney before returning to Japan to study the limits of the discipline. “In Japan, all children learn to fold paper,” Isogawa says. “I noticed early I was very good at it, even in kindergarten. Other children would be out playing, but I would often stay at home and fold paper. There is a mathematical order you must follow; numbers and angles have to be very specific.”

His absorption in the art was disturbed momentarily when he discovered Takahiro’s even more extraordinary talent. “Ha! I thought; “My God — here is somebody better than me!” He immediately began working with his former patternmaker on discovering ever more intricate adaptations of origami to fabric. “To see what was possible.”

The evolution of some of the pair’s projects — newspaper sheets folded to create elaborate “woven” surfaces without a single cut, then adapted to calico toiles, then finally to vividly beautiful bolts of silk and wool, are mounted on rails around the gallery walls...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Fashion/Living-dolls-from-whim-to-gallery-wall/2004/12/02/1101923265958.html

origami bag:

from the exhibition:

from the collection:

 

[Estella*]

what a fantastic thread!
my origami skills are very poor, i can only do the simplest things

i love everything that has been posted, those shoes!!!



shell by tomoko fuse:

strawberries also by him

butterflies by akira yoshizawa

ballet tutu

all from www.sarahsorigami.com

 

[travolta]

oh very cute stuff--yes i'm up again! a quick peek before i'm off! i love the stuff you posted lux--that is a gorgeous bag! annak that is such a cute ballet tutu! wouldn't be cute to make little paper dolls with origami outfits?

 

[Estella*]

fashion/textile-related students' work from www.origami-artist.com (paul jackson's site)

 

[travolta]

^that first pic looks like an issey miyake creation.

 

[Estella*]

from the same site

paper strip rolled up by heat by vincent floderer from www.crimp.free.fr/

 

[Estella*]

elephant by joseph wu

fish by joseph wu

akira yoshizawa again...

turtle by kamiya satoshi

skull by NOA

all from www.origami.as/

 

[jennifer~]

During my (much) younger years I was obsessed with the craft of origami. Cranes were my paper airplanes, so to speak. I'm enjoying this thread, it's really rekindled some interest...

 

[TokyoVogue]

www.origamiboulders.com

very hilarious....

 

[Sephora_Socialite]

I used to love origami...I even taught it to the kinder and 1st graders

I can do some complicated things, but lately I've been too lazy...I'll see if I can dig out some of my stuff...unfortunately my really kool ones like lanterns, alligators, elephants, etc, have been taken by/given to friends.

 

[Artemis]

My paternal aunt is an origami artist ("folder"). She doesn't anything really fancy but incorporates other media with the paper folds to make things more interesting.

Here's some of her older work:

 

[Elegance.Is.Refusal.]

love this thread very inspiring origami i cant even make a crane and believe me i've tried

 

[snowqueen]

My uncle got me this amaizing oragami book from japan. But the instructions are in japanese so i cant understand it. Im all fingers and thumbs any way.

 

[Estella*]

here is my simple family of birds, it's a long way to accessories travolta, you see
but they look nice pinned on the hair