From Music to Fashion: The Interplay of Trends and Technology Across Eras
By Marc-Andre Pelletier | Brilliant Labs, Program Specialist
This year, Brilliant Labs is offering a challenge on innovative fashion. Who will be the next fashion icon? Who will be the new innovative fashion personality? Will it be from the elite group of fashion like Cartier, Hermes, Armani, Gucci, Chanel?
I put my predictions towards music stars.
Why?
Just think of some music styles. For example, in the 1960s, we think of Jimmy Hendricks, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead. What do their clothes look like? We associate a lot of this era with the hippies. We think of bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye shirts, headbands and sunglasses of different colors.
In the 1970s, it’s Glam Rock. The what? Glam for Glamour… which means charming or sophisticated. We are thinking here of artists like David Bowie and the band Kiss who included sci.fi. (science fiction) elements found in the greatest movies in the history of time (in my opinion): Star Wars, Aliens and Planet of the Apes. You can find these sci.fi. elements not only in their music but also in their extravagant clothes.
Now, the music of my time: the 1990s. The grunge with Nirvana among others who rebel against commercialization, the high life. Jeans with holes in them, big t-shirts found in thrift stores, in short, the opposite of glam rock. On the other hand, a new genre was born in the 1990s, hip hop! This genre of music has become one of the most popular and remains still to this day to the top. Rappers introduced us to baggy pants, track suits, huge jerseys and also big golden chains, gold teeth, diamond rings etc.
In the 2010’s, the appearance of electronic music and light shows brings us the brightly colored clothes but also the Leg fuzzies (some kind of tubes or “leg warmers” placed at the height of the ankles to the knees with a lot of hair and bright colors).
It is important to remember that music plays an important role in fashion because the great musicians are our models. Often, the teenage clientele, who are still trying to define there identity, look up to their idols. This is even easier to notice since the invention of television and video clips where we can see our favorite artists singing our favorite songs from our homes. That was difficult to do before the invention of television. We had to travel to concerts to see the artists, which could be expensive and especially complicated since we had to convince our parents to give us permission to go and on top of that we needed to find someone to drive us there.
That said, with the help of technology, music has changed a lot. For example, the invention of the distortion pedal. Rock musicians wanted to recreate the sound of amplifiers pushed to the max… without having to break their ears too much. They noticed that when they changed the electrical signal produced by their guitar, between their guitar and the amplifier, it allowed them to create different sounds. They could then play with the amount of distortion to customize their sounds. This allowed them to stand out even more! A little later, we managed, with this same kind of technology, to create the first synthesizers. These instruments took up a lot of space but that allowed us to change our sounds with almost infinite combinations! I invite you to listen to videos of the first synthesizers (for example the MOOG). You will see how many buttons there are! It would take us years to learn how all these buttons work! These instruments mentioned above use technologies that are called analog, which means that we work with something concrete and physical; electricity.
With the invention of computers came the digital era. Instead of working with electrical signals of different strengths and frequencies, we work with numbers: 0’s and 1’s. These numbers are then sent to a processor that will transform these numbers into actions. The innovation in this is that if the computer (processor) is tiny and able to analyze long sequences of 0’s and 1’s quickly, messages like: play this sound, for this length, at this intensity, with these effects, allows us to recreate the same sounds (or at least, very close) as those big analog instruments but in an easy, portable and simple to learn way.
To make the parallel with fashion, we still often think that fashion is concrete; materials, sewing machines etc… But how could we add digital to fashion? Whether it’s for design, presentation or execution, digital can greatly enhance your creations. Music, for example, can help in your creative process because it can influence your decisions. Quiet music might influence you to create a soft, pastel colored garment. Rock music would give a more colorful garment? The same phenomenon could happen when presenting your creations. A fast music would make the models move quickly and a slow music would create a more serene, slow and ample presentation?
So I invite you to create music that you think could have an impact on today’s fashion. Imagine being the person who directly influenced the decisions of Alexander McQueen, Prada or Saint Laurent. How do you think your music could influence them? What kind of music could be presented at their shows?
For more information or to join any of Brilliant Labs’ Innovation Challenges contact Marc-André at:
marc-andre@brilliantlabs.ca &
