Electroluminescent Fashion: Check Out Vega Zaishi Wang's Latest Collection

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAivuHjhOpA&feature=youtu.be

Since her graduation from Central Saint Martins in 2008, Beijing-based fashion designer Vega Wang has drawn on her fascination with light, finding captivating and unconventional ways to incorporate it into her designs. Early on, the bioluminescence of deep sea life inspired her to augment fabric with organic animations brought to life by electroluminescence (EL), a tip-off from her parents—both electrical engineers.

Her newest line, Alpha Lyrae, continues her exploration of EL in clothing, this time deriving her inspiration not from the deep sea, but instead from deep space. Wang’s first name “Vega” refers to one of the brightest stars in our night sky, a heavenly body also referred to as Alpha Lyrae. With this eight-dress collection of luminescent designs, Wang tells the story of the universe from beginning to end.

The collection debuted in September at The Creators Project: Beijing 2012 in collaboration with UFO Media Lab, electronic musician and Creator Zhang Shouwang, and Top Right Optoelectronics Ltd, with support from The Creators Project. Though the dresses are real-life creations, we can imagine them on virtual fashion icons like Lula, Hatsune Miku, or even on TRON’s Quorra.

Today, we’re launching the collection as an interactive experience in our Digital Gallery, where you can watch making-of videos, view mood boards, read more about the collaboration, and most notably, watch each animated dress come to life.

But perhaps what’s most exciting about this collection is the way Wang’s augmented dresses are pushing the frontier of fashion presentation. The dresses pulsate and radiate cosmic blue light, and when plugged into a laptop, stream custom spaced-out animations alluding to fashion and technology’s union and the hybrid medium’s beautiful, bright future.

Watch a video and see images of the collection’s debut in Beijing below.

Alpha Lyrae by Vega Zaishi Wang

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmBe1sJRp8o&feature=youtu.be

Photos courtesy of Zhuang Yan