Consumers are interacting with clothing and brands like never before, and alternative technologies are playing a big part in driving these behaviour changes.
Augmented Reality (AR) technology is transforming consumers’ experience of fashion, my eponymous label NIXI KILLICK (NXK)’s current collections allow audiences to engage and activate a new level of reality carried within the clothing itself. Garments are wearable tools! They carry our character, allowing us to project our personality and connect communities! And now AR clothing is at the forefront of digital fashion, facilitating an interactive intimacy with technology in everyday life.
3D AR activations on garments
Activated Augmented Reality clothing is no longer something out of a dream – Cryptic Frequency is my latest collection to hijack and integrate technology from different fields to decipher the colour code, with garments carrying in-built AR animations.
User friendly, AR-activated textiles utilise technology every step of the way; from early research and development, to body mapping and transforming initial sketches into garment patterns on my Lenovo YOGA laptop, up to producing the finals to send to the factory for production.
The end result is fashion that unifies an engagement with technology and clothes that is unheard of… garments that come to life! Consumers can interact with and activate a new layer of life carried within the clothing.
Lenovo Yoga – Nixi Killick
Flexible 3D printing
I believe we have a responsibility to make manifest our creative capacity as renegades, we need to celebrate progressive attitudes, critical thinking and a taste for breaking boundaries. As a creator, I must channel my creative capacity to encourage consumers to think critically and do what they can to improve the outlook of our future here on Earth. The future of fashion is about distilling visions of potential in the unfamiliar…to explore and visualise.
Advances in 3D printing mean designers like me can now utilise this technology to create embellishments, accessories and complex shapes using recyclable materials.
We can utilise this new language of technology to visualise ideas around hybrid practice and exploring material alternatives. It’s an important opportunity for contemporary creative contortionists empowered by the momentum and culture of radical change.
Innovative, powerful tools
I think instinctively NXK is about recontextualising the parameters of ‘Fashion’, probing the perimeters of possibility, and leveraging a sense of techno-optimism to articulate contemporary ‘wearables’.
The role of technology is to help us accelerate new ideas – technology has the power to uplift our imagination, and in conjunction with fashion, explore new realities. That’s why it’s important to invest in powerful tools that help push your ideas into the future.
My Lenovo YOGA laptop, with its portable, slim and streamlined design, plus vibrant colour display, has the tools to create and express my intuitive visual language like the Cryptic Frequency collection. Working with my YOGA, I can edit and share heavy files, such as multi-layered garment artwork, in real scale with ease, without any programs crashing.
Technology like this guides me to actively grow, expand and change.
NXK is a contemporary pastiche of nature, future potential and technology.
If it’s not in the future, it doesn’t exist – this mantra has always reminded me to keep moving forward, be agile and evolve as a designer. Alternative technologies and the potential of the future will always be a defining theme of NIXI KILLICK.
About Nixi Killick
Artist born Imagineer, Nixi Killick (@nixikillick) uses fashion to articulate a utopian freshness while drawing parallels between the possible and the impossible. Fostering inspiration from her background growing up in the circus, performance and the arts, Nixi embraces creative escapism and indulges in the bizarre. She blurs boundaries, hijacks technologies and brings worlds colliding in the realms of art, design and creativity as she dreams her future awake in vibrant technicolour. Nixi’s style and iconic sense of design uses Augmented Reality (AR) technology in exciting ways. Garments become wearable tools, Art begins to breathe, and mixed reality is unlocked. With clients like Lady Gaga, SIA, Kimbra, Hiatus Kayote and Brainfeeder, and collections hitting runways around the world, Nixi Killick is set to become a powerhouse in Australian fashion.
Article originally published on our Content Partner site "Women Love Tech"