Exhibition openings are a rare thing nowadays — even rarer when it comes to organizing an event that aims at bringing together a lot of people in small, highly interactive spaces. Nevertheless, on February 24th thousands of visitors flocked to the annual Vogue Talents event, dedicated to the international scouting of new creatives and designers. How did they even get in, you might ask. They simply walked through the narrow marble arches splashed with greenery, into a building suspended in mid-air over a tropical lake. Inside they found themed rooms where they touched new garments, connected with people and had a chance to meet a new generation of up-and-coming talents selected by Vogue’s editorial staff.
We created rooms from scratch, expanded the very concepts of space and accessibility and made it possible for a wider audience to visit an exhibition at a time like this. Within the walls of our fantastic buildings, the parameters of reality change. We have customized entire rooms, itineraries and experiences while revolutionizing the roles of sponsors and partners that become interactive and dynamic elements of the tour. Thousands of people, who would have never been able to contemporaneously fit in an actual physical space, tried on clothes, listened to stories of sustainable fashion, shared best practices and created a network able to transcend the physical boundaries of our computer screens.
We made our wildest dreams become reality by building the online platform that hosted the 2021 edition of Vogue Talents. In its first digital edition, by September 2020 the exhibition had already drawn over 100thousand virtual visitors. Last year, the Vogue Talents palazzo was suspended in a rosy, dreamlike mist. Through the portals/hotspots you could enter the rooms, each carefully designed by our 3D designers to recreate the fine features and feel of classical architecture.
For the current edition, the building required a makeover. Although certainly less challenging and time-consuming than an actual construction site, the renovation work was definitely more radical and put our skills to the test as we attempted to translate the concept of the new edition on screen. Environmental sustainability and corporate responsibility are the focus of this year’s event that aims at creating new forms of awareness, as suggested by the title. This explains the new building’s shape, its roof-garden and intricate patterns of climbing plants that swivel around the arches and colonnades of the exhibition spaces in order to underline the green DNA of Vogue’s featured brands.
The tailor-made quality of the rooms is one of the most obvious advantages alongside the possibility to constantly renovate and tweak exhibition spaces that would normally be subjected to structural and architectural restrictions. In short, each brand can rapidly create and customize its virtual spaces so that they reflect their specific marketing and identity needs. Anyone who has attempted to do so in the real world has had to deal with the limitations of physical space, inaccessible areas, interchangeable areas that have to cater to the needs of different brands in a tight time span. The exquisite atmosphere created by Fendi on occasion of their VIP catwalk in July 2019, with an artfully lit colosseum looming magically in the background, are but an example of savvy branding applied to magnificent spaces that cannot, however, escape to the golden rules of reality. Digital modeling breaks these rules, making it possible to fabricate architectures for every situation.
While current technologies allow us to tear down walls and breathe life into never-before-seen projects, another concept that has been deeply revolutionized by the digitalization of events is time. A physical event corresponds to a specific time span. Reaching the venue, parking, standing in line as well as 9am-6pm opening times are becoming obsolete. The virtual space we created for Vogue Talents has no limits in terms of time and capacity, it can host thousands of people regardless of the time zone or physical whereabouts of the visitor. These events are open 24/7 and are equipped with invite-only rooms, exclusive content and experimental digital experiences. Compared to the in-presence editions, there was a tenfold boost in terms of participation, not because the previously displayed products were of lower quality but because the access to these events was regulated by the laws of the physical world.
Among the possible ways of directly experiencing the creativity of the artists on display, 3D garment modeling is one of the most interesting. For some time now, the industry has turned to digital representation by means of filters and AR apps — we pride ourselves on being among the mighty trailblazers in this field. Working closely with the artists, drawing inspiration from their sketches, fueled by the intent to digitally render such aspects as lightness, thickness, fabric quality and the warmth of a garment; we managed to create a three-dimensional exhibition for the 2020 edition of Vogue Talents, featuring “explorable” mannequins, donning clothes by the featured fashion designers.
Although we cannot actually touch the surfaces nor appreciate their scent, digitally displayed complex shapes such as these have become, in a certain way, quite hyper realistic.
The starting point for the realization of 3D garments are pictures and paper patterns: it requires several pictures of the same piece taken from different angles and with a lighting that is able to convey the correct color tone, texture and detail of the fabric. The more information we have, the more faithful the 3D representation will be.
The first steps are taken on Marvelous Designer and CLO 3D: here we create the 3D model of the garment, we apply it on the mannequin and, like actual tailors, fit it in the desired pose so that we can perfectly simulate the sense of weight and tensile behavior of the fabric. We then transfer the mannequin to Zbrush, which allows us to add extra creases, seamwork and other details. Finally, we open everything on Cinema 4D, where we hone the texture and elastic properties of the fabrics (velvet, silk, cotton, etc).
As the way we evaluate a fashion item changes, so does the visibility of the event’s sponsors and partners. In the digital universe, they take on different roles with personalized spaces and dedicated interactive experiences that replace the usual corner shops, flyers and gadgets that are handed out at the most glamorous events. In just one click, Xiaomi presents its new packaging and color palette, or Mattel’s legendary card game Uno celebrates its 50-year anniversary with an online game featuring Vivetta Ponti’s designs inspired by her love for animals.
Interaction and gameplay have been put to good use in the non-profit sector with a graphic treasure hunt that brings us face to face with a giant elephant whose legs alone fill an entire room of the exhibition space. This visual and metaphysical experience is meant to spark reflections on the connection between fashion, environment, nature and society, highlighting good practices in sustainable production and examples that offer new ways of approaching the businesses with renewed awareness. This experience was made available in both editions of the festival and is accompanied by a series of frequently asked questions regarding social responsibility alongside answers by the most influential names of the fashion realm.
A common thread spans across other spaces of the exhibition, offering continuity and showcasing yet another collateral advantage of digital architecture. While on one hand the palace that houses the Vogue Talents event is ever-changing, open to new artists, ideas and concepts; on the other it represents a long-lasting investment, a beacon of stability that is just as versatile and iconic as the digitally tailor-made garments of each user. The customization of the experience and the possibility to choose when, how much and which materials you want to consult without having to endure pre-established rules or move in forced directions is definitely one of the most appreciated aspects for those who decide to embark on a journey within the suspended castle. This year it overlooked the placid waters of a lake…who knows what the next edition holds in store!
