Electro-luxe
Grafik, Issue 161
In the weird yet wonderful world of Moritz Waldemeyer, text messaging chandeliers and towering chameleon chairs tussle with LED roulette tables and transforming dresses. The thirty-four-year-old is a modern-day techno-wizard who, in his black sweatshirt and cotton scarf, is the antithesis of your traditional tape-on-the-glasses technician. From his studio in Fulham, west London, he has collaborated with a stream of top creative talents from Ron Arad to Zaha Hadid, mixing science and design to create some mind-boggling results.
“I was always into mechanics when I was growing up, and watched my grandparents make sculptures and paint together, so it makes sense that I am creative with technology,” he says, sipping black coffee. “But to work on those mechanical dresses, that was amazing for me.” The dresses he is referring to are those from fashion designer Hussein Chalayan’s much celebrated spring/summer 2007 collection, first seen on the catwalk in autumn 2006. The collection consisted of delicately constructed garments which transformed in shape. They were controlled by computer-generated mechanisms that were concealed underneath each outfit, allowing hemlines to rise, seams to unfold and shapes to transform.
It was through a call from north London-based concept-creation company 2D3D that Waldemeyer became involved. “They said we have a project that we need a few motors switching on and off for and that we heard that you can do something like that,” he says in his mixed German and American accent. “That’s all I knew at that point in time.” Soon Waldemeyer found himself in the east end studio of Hussein Chalayan, surrounded by a team sculpting outfits on mannequins and sewing in tiny mechanisms. The outfits didn’t only change in shape, but in style too, with hemlines shifting through a fashion timeline, transforming from a Twenties flapper dress to a Sixties tunic.
“I had never been to a fashion show before and then was suddenly responsible for the dresses which were to be the dramatic finale of the show. It was so new to me,” Waldemeyer muses. “And when you have the catwalk show, you have just one chance. If something goes wrong with the technology, that’s it.”
The son of two doctors, German-born Waldemeyer originally came to London on an international business degree in 1995. It was during the following year, while on a college trip to the Bosch factory in South Carolina, that the wonders of mechanics attracted him. “The factory was amazing. There were all these hi-tech robots making car components and I realized, this is it,” he exclaims, “technology is the area for me.” In no time he returned to London and enrolled in the Mechatronics degree at Kings College, studying a combination of mechanical and electrical engineering and software. He continued his studies with a Masters, which included a placement at Philips Research Laboratory, leading to his first job and an introduction to wearable electronics.
“The Philips team were really at the forefront of pushing wearable technology,” he states, continuing: “It was super-cutting edge at that time.” Working on collaborations with sports brands such as Nike, Waldemeyer integrated technology into clothing, creating practical performance pieces such as sportswear with MP3 players and fabric controls woven into them and tops knitted with conductive thread designed to monitor the wearer’s heart rate. This training proved invaluable when he set up his own studio to work freelance on his own concepts.
“It all started with the text-messaging chandelier for Swarovski. That was my first real project in the world of design and immediately got so much attention,” he explains. Commissions came flowing in, from an illuminated drumstick that created words mid-air to a touch-sensitive tabletop, and he began tutoring a weekly design class at the Royal College of Art. In 2006, following the work on Chalayan’s mechanical dresses, he was contacted by Chicago pop band OK GO who wanted to add a touch of the technician’s magic to their stage costumes.
“The OK GO jackets were really inspired by the numbers on the back of sport jerseys and casino slot machines,” he smiles. “And as their guitars hide the front of the suits, I thought the only surface to work with is the back.” LED lights were carefully stitched into the back lining of each jacket, then tiny holes were cut into the top fabric allowing the lights to shine through. The jackets had control buttons hidden inside which, when switched on, sent the letters O,K,G,O flashing across their backs to spell the band’s name.
Waldemeyer’s playful merging of technology and fashion continued with two more collaborations with Chalayan, the first of which, for the autumn/winter 2008 collection, was a huge software challenge. “The concept was to create video dresses that displayed moving images, but I had no time at all to do it in,” he sighs, “so I had to use technology that was readily available off the shelf. I couldn’t use anything exotic whatsoever.” The outfits were constructed in numerous layers, starting with a structural base that could hold the weight of technology. This was topped with a circuitry layer, complete with thousands of LED lights, which was then covered with a diffusing fabric. The outcome was two dresses, one screening giant fish underwater and the other a blossom that opens and closes, offering a grand finale to the catwalk show. “I never imagined work like that,” he reveals in disbelief. “It was amazing. I lived in Hussein’s studio for one week and slept on the sofa for two hours a night and worked and worked to get it all together.”
The technological challenge for the following collection was no easier. This time he worked with materials to create laser dresses. There was no catwalk show in this occasion; instead the film Readings was created with Nick Knight’s Showstudio.com and screened in a tiny space above the Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris. “I had to adapt mechanisms so that they could move the lasers, making them interact with crystals that were sewn into the dresses,” he explains. The collection was a wonder, with outward-facing lasers shooting straight lines of red light into the darkened room. In other outfits fabric folds full of crystals were illuminated by the lasers, reflecting a warm aura of light all around.
This combination of technology and fashion is to be expected: after all, the clothes we wear, from formal top hats and tunics to computerised dresses, are a reflection of the times we live in. “Designers try and reinvent things by changing the shape but it takes more than that now,” Waldemeyer states. “I think the only way to innovate is to use technology.”
This season is set to be a hectic one for Waldemeyer, from giving design talks in South Carolina to working with Italian lighting company Flos and installing his latest creation – an interactive organza chandelier for Microsoft, which was influenced by his clothing collaborations. “I love taking elements from the fashion work and turning them around somehow to make something new,” he admits. “And often with technology there doesn’t seem to be any limits, which is amazing. It means anything is possible. It doesn’t feel like rocket science at all.”