"Find the balance between embedding new technologies into your products without it being harmful.”
“Garments are the closest thing to the skin, which makes them the perfect interface,” says Dutch Miami-based FashionTech designer, roboticist and innovator, Anouk Wipprecht. This concept of ‘fashion as interface’ is a key theme which ties together Anouk’s hugely varied and innovative body of work over the last 20 years. “A textile or a 3D print can form the ‘host’ for these pieces of technology connected to the body. Some designs are very H.R. Giger-style exoskeletons and, in other designs, the technology is hidden and you don’t even see it, but it’s still technology hosted on the body.”
A natural introvert who spent her childhood in the Netherlands observing the world around her, Anouk took an early interest in fashion as self-expression and began to study fashion design and tailoring as a young teenager. “A few years into my education, I started to realise that fashion might be expressive, but it was very analogue instead of reactive. It was then that I got really interested in robotics. These robots had the ‘brain’ and the technological ‘heartbeat’ that I wanted my garments and fabrics to have. I started exploring stories about fabrics coming to life and living with us.”