Adobe has collaborated with fashion designer Christian Cowan to create a fascinating dress that, Notebookcheck rightly points out, is reminiscent of Katniss Everdeen's transformative dresses. The Hunger Games (minus the flames).
The dress, part of Adobe's ever-evolving Project Primrose, debuted at New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024 and reportedly wowed audiences with its interactive array of patterns and animations.
Known as the Adobe x Christian Cowan dress, this ensemble is made up of 1,264 individual laser-cut polymer disperse liquid crystal (PDLC) 'petals'. PDLC, an electroactive material typically found in smart window applications, can change the amount of light it diffuses several times per second. This allows the petals to alternate and change between silver and ivory tones.
Giving life to the dress
As you can imagine, creating the dress was a major undertaking. Each PDLC petal had to be coated with a flexible printed circuit board mapped to a larger die.
Adobe's suite of products, including Illustrator and After Effects, were used to design the flexible PCBs, create the patterns, and bring the dress to life through various motion graphics.
“The true technological craftsmanship that has gone into this piece is mind-blowing,” said Christian Cowan, who has dressed celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Cardi B and Heidi Klum. “And the simplicity that remains is so perfect, You would never know the layers and layers of bones, satin, cables, motherboards, transmitters and polymer scales that are involved. The best part of the job I have is being able to dream and then make it happen those dreams. a reality, this was exactly that.”
Project Primrose is the brainchild of Christine Dierk, an Adobe research scientist specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI) with interests in wearable computing, ambient displays, manufacturing, and interaction design.
