BREAK THE MOULD

From that swan dress to spray-on gowns, one-of-a-kind pieces crafted from innovative materials have always captured our attention and continue to push the boundaries of fashion

- BY TESS DE VIVIE DE RÉGIE

There is an old and widely adopted adage that nothing in fashion is ever new. Trends circulate on a well-oiled, decades-long loop, bursting back into the sartorial arena having been absent just long enough to slip out of our memories and regain a veneer of freshness that's well-primed to appeal to our bottomless appetite for novelty.

Can it really be that fashion has so completely exhausted all avenues of innovation? Perhaps not, as a new vanguard of technologically minded, boundary-pushing creatives is proving with state-of-the-art fabrics and unexpected silhouettes. It seems that every last drop from the wellspring of ideas has yet to be squeezed out.

A significant example of textiles being used in an unexpected way came via Coco Chanel, argues Roger Leong, senior collection curator at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum. “[Her] use of wool jersey took a fabric made for English underwear and turned it into [couture] for modern women who wanted to look and feel relaxed and confident,” he notes.

Pioneers of Japanese avant-garde from the ’80s onwards, like Issey Miyake’s groundbreaking Pleats Please line, scrambled established codes for silhouettes and materials. “[Miyake’s] collection reimagined both the aesthetic and technical possibilities of pleating,” reflects Leong.