, AW20 Paris Fashion Week
In recent years, the world’s largest fashion show has seamlessly blended art, fashion, and technology. Continuing the trend this season, the first-ever Taiwanese augmented reality fashion show will grace the runways at the Paris Menswear Fashion Week beginning January 16, followed by an off-site VR Exhibition & Showroom afterwards.
The show is helmed by the LVMH Prize shortlisted Taiwanese designer Angus Chiang. Founded in 2015, Angus Chiang is a contemporary menswear label that showcases designs inspired by Taiwanese culture. True to character, this year’s eye-catching designs will also all nod to the cutting-edge internet culture of Taiwan and Asia. Inspired by the phenomenon of our ever-changing digital culture, the experience will blend art and technology, allowing audience members to create their own Oh My Almighty God! with an AR app Angus Reality made exclusively for the event.
Recall an earlier version of the internet: the clumsy first steps of the World Wide Web, where gaudy animated gifs and rainbow blink tags reigned free. Today, Chiang’s new, whimsical line lets us relive those early days through the lens of AR runway show and VR exhibition. This future technology is not only woven into the clothing line, but also the show space itself. What’s more, the AR runway will be live-streamed during the show for all to see. In collaboration with Paris-based studio DVTK, the novel experience is a moment to embrace all the realities, true or false, tangible or intangible, and bring together these disparate elements into a new vision and form of fashion.
After all, fashion is the marriage of creativity, communication, and utility -- or in other words, living art that is manifested daily. It reflects who we are and who we aspire to be. Likewise, the promise of fully immersive technologies like AR will elevate us to new levels of expression that were previously unimaginable to the world of fashion. It’s only fitting that a non-cookie-cutter designer like Chang paves the way forward to the intertwined future of fashion and technology. In 2017, Chiang was nominated and shortlisted for the Top 21 Young Fashion Designers in the annual LVMH Prize, a prestigious award created to honor and support young, budding fashion designers around the world. Shortly after, he debuted his first line at the official Paris Men's Fashion Week. This collection will mark his fourth year.