That’s a stunning name for a dress and it lives up to the name both in terms of quaintness and feeling of being somewhere over the rainbow – or deep in the sea. Or fashion designer Ying Gao, the creator of the (No)where (Now)here dress, must have stolen the idea from angels who are here and nowhere at the same time. But while angels may vanish in the blue as you keep looking at them, Ying Gao’s creation behaves differently.
At first sight it emits a sea-like moving glow, but in order to see the full magic potential of it, you have to stare. Under your gaze the dress begins to light up (the magic occurs due to eye-tracking technology; when it is activated, tiny motors turn on to move the fabric of the dress, and captivating patterns emerge). The body starts to cover up with photo-luminescent threads fixed upon ruched fabric; there is also a base layer made up from glow-in-the-dark threads interwoven into ribbons of fabric on the top of the dress.
Of course the garment defies any description, so those who would like to see its glory with their own eyes will be able to do it in the coming fall at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, and later, the next spring, at the Textile Museum of Canada.
