Last week Taipei Fashion Week hosting it’s new multimedia fashion show on 7th October in Ambi Space One at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. Always an over-the-top, full media blitz event, this year’s show featured an immersive, high-tech 5G experience that integrates virtual art with traditional physical runway shows. The inaugural presentation exemplifies multiple guiding themes for this year’s event: Sustainability, Functionality, Diversity, Cross Collaboration, and Humanity. The Ministry of Culture works to make Taipei Fashion Week one of the four major fashion weeks in Asia, synchronizing with similar celebrations held in Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai.
Photo: UUIN X mosaic artist, Chiang, Kai-Chun
“Fashion week is an especially exciting time for us, allowing us to express the full range and diversity of Taiwanese artistry and digital design,” said Taipei Fashion Week representatives. “This year we will feature brilliant combinations of six Taiwanese designer brands and artists who bring together art and fashion, while partnering with Chunghwa Telecom’s 5G to transmit and stream multimedia images, technological music, and visual effects. The cross-domain and cross-venue cooperation creates a completely new way to choreograph a runway experience – promising a show that attendees will find absolutely unforgettable. Taipei Fashion Week continues to develop fashion installations illustrating the prosperous and innovative creative merger that is uniquely possible only in Taiwan.”
Photo: INF X Illustrator, Chiaos
Taipei Fashion Week: Where Tech and Fashion Collide
The opening show was curated by well-known design team, whose work spans both commerce and art while excelling at the integration of digital technology into fashion’s physical experience, redefining the relationship between performing arts and technology. In an experience that is quintessentially Taiwanese, featured brands use digital content tools to blend together aesthetics, creativity, concepts, visuals, technology, space installations, sounds, and other elements to conjure a tableau evoking the technicolor power of a lush dreamscape.
Taipei’s Fashion Week synchronizes a tripartite of three physical and digital forces: incorporating a brand-new physical space at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park with the digital venue of Ambi Space One and 5G Connect – transmitting audio and video to each other to “co-act in different places” and conjure a new style of fashion exhibition that combines virtual and physical reality. 5G is designed to give faster download speeds, low latency, more capacity, and connectivity to billions of devices across the globe, especially in areas of virtual reality (VR), the IoT, and artificial intelligence (AI). The immersive experience purposefully includes two venues and two events happening simultaneously, allowing audiences to enjoy the visceral merger between high-performance tech and physical fashion.
Photo: (Above) C JEAN X Chen Ching Lin & Ma Yu Hsiu. (Below) JUST IN XX X Taiwan contemporary art master, Paul Chiang
The show includes six Taiwanese fashion brands combined with six groups of artists to form a luxurious lineup for the opening show. Assuming final confirmations, the combos include: AUSTIN.W with artist, BP-Billy; C Jean with artist, Ching-Lin Chen and Yu-Hsiu Ma; #DAMUR with abstract painting artist, Wu Tung-Lung; INF with illustrator, Chiaos; UUIN with mosaic artist, Chiang, Kai-Chun; and JUST IN XX with Taiwan contemporary art master, Paul Chiang. These artists will work to showcase the beauty of fashion and art, located somewhere between visual and auditory science, with technology interacting to intensify and propel the flow. Audiences will experience an immersive illusory visual shock that never stops vibrating between the human body and two spaces: virtual and real.
Photo: (Above) DAMUR X Abstract paiter Wu Tung Lung. (Below) AUSTIN.W X Artist BP – Billy
Taipei Fashion Week is excited to feature clothing brands from: C JEAN, CHARINYEH, Claudia Wang, Dleet, DOUCHANGLEE, GIOIA PAN, INF, Jamie Wei Huang, JENN LEE, Liyu Tsai, Seivson, SILZENCE Men, Storywear, WANGLILING, WEAVISM, and #DAMUR.