Toni Maticevski x Amplify x Afterpay x The Fabricant, bringing Digi-Couture to Australian Fashion WeeK
The physically impossible Animator Overcoat was brought to digital life in a borderless design collaboration between renowned physical fashion designer Toni Maticevski, and The Fabricant, for a digital dressing experience created by branding agency Amplify. Made of liquid metal and augmented with gravity-defying tentacles, the piece fulfilled the brief: To create a spectacular Digi-Couture piece that introduced Australian fashion lovers to the concept of being digital dressed, debuting at Australian Fashion Week, in a project made possible by Afterpay, sponsors of the nation’s leading fashion event.
Melbourne-based Maticevski initially sketched the garment using classic fashion design techniques. The designs were built in 3D by The Fabricant’s fashion team, who then interpreted the garment for the non-physical space.
Digital fashion craftsmanship allowed for fantastical elements to be naturally incorporated into the overall design that could never exist in reality, such as free-floating tentacles and the dripping liquid texture of the fabric. The fully realised piece was then crafted to a hyper-real and flawless digital finish.
Visitors to Australian Fashion Week were directed to the Afterpay Digi-Couture experience, where they could try on the garment in a specially designed digital dressing booth. The experience made high fashion accessible to all by enabling attendees to wear the groundbreaking item in the virtual world.
After having their photo taken by a fashion photographer, the posed images were sent to digital fashion retail platform DressX, who tailored the Animator Overcoat to fit each and every person. The digitally dressed image was sent back to the wearer to share across their social channels.
Amber Slooten, Co-Founder, Creative Director, The Fabricant, said of the design:
“The Animator Overcoat has elements of nature translated into a fantastical digital reality. Inspired by the sea urchin, the garment might look hostile from the outside, but it will soften the wearer's perspective on what identity means in this new world.”
Discussing the project, Afterpay said:
“The liquid aesthetic of the Animator Overcoat embodies the new fluidity between the physical and digital worlds, as well as between gender, materiality, beauty and hostility, the possible and the impossible. It offers the wearer a chance to express multiple concepts simultaneously.”
