Adobe collaborated with fashion designer Christian Cowan to create a mesmerizing dress Notebook control rightly points out, reminiscent of Katniss Everdeen’s transforming dresses The hunger Games (minus the flames).
The dress, part of Adobe’s ever-evolving Project Primrose, debuted during Fall/Winter NYC Fashion Week 2024 and was set to wow audiences with its interactive series of patterns and animations.
Known as the Adobe x Christian Cowan dress, this outfit consists of 1,264 individual laser-cut polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) ‘petals’. PDLC, an electroactive material usually found in smart window applications, can change the amount of light it emits several times per second. This allows the petals to alternate and shift between shades of silver and ivory.
Brings the dress to life
As you can imagine, the creation of the dress was reportedly a major undertaking. Each PDLC petal had to be covered by a flexible circuit board mapped to a larger array.
Adobe’s product suite, including Illustrator and After Effects, was used to design the flexible circuit boards, create the patterns and bring the dress to life through the various moving images.
“The true technological craftsmanship that went into this piece is mind-boggling,” says Christian Cowan, who has dressed celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Cardi B and Heidi Klum. “And the simplicity you are left with is so seamless. You would never know the layers of boning, satin, cabling, motherboards, transmitters and polymer scales that all come into play. The best part of the job I have is that I can dream and who can then make dreams come true. a reality, this was exactly that.”
Project Primrose is the brainchild of Christine Dierkan Adobe researcher specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI) with interests in wearable computing, ambient displays, manufacturing, and interaction design.