Parametric Dress with Brian Harms

and K. Voorhies

 

 

 

 

In 2011, taking inspiration from a parametrically derived lamp that designer Brian Harms had created the year before, we collaborated with Brian in designing a dress based on similar concepts. We worked with the viewable angles, materiality, cell structuring, and overall form of the dress to formulate a response that was wearable, but exceeded normative constraints of clothing.

 

By having a thickness of which the wearer was constantly aware, creating modesty only through orientation of view angle, and by having a non-repeating internal structure, we were working to understand the dividing lines between architecture and fashion.

 

The next steps were to be the production of a paper prototype and potentially a mold, to produce multiples from plastic materials, but the project has not ever reached fabrication due to external demands on the collaborators’ time.

 

Dress Design and DIY 3d scanning by Katherine Voorhies.

 

Inspiration, baseline parametric script, and all animations by Brian Harms.

 

Modeling, rendering, and bespoke parametric scripting by Duane McLemore.