Charlotte Smith of Sydney, Australia has a groundbreaking plan for The Darnell Collection 2015. This collector of rare vintage clothing, and storyteller about the authentic and timeless materials used to create it, has evolved her collection’s concept entirely. To blaze a trail for today’s designers who appreciate the classic styles of clothing, Smith partnered with Gerber’s own Mary McFadden.
Mary was able to make Smith’s dream a reality, catapulting her into the 3D-world and exploring the potential of taking 250 years of fashion to the 21st century.
“The Darnell Collection is important on so many levels, but perhaps the highest being its role in bringing the true art of fashion to life. It serves as an inspiration, and allows us to delve into the past and bring details and ideas to the present in a new and exciting way,” said McFadden, who is executive director, CAD Product Management, with Gerber.
The process of converting these garments to a computer generated dress for a 3D avatar yields astonishing results. Being vintage and highly constructed, some with corsets, yards of fabric and even boning, the dresses that McFadden 3D-rendered were a challenge.
With these garments being older and fragile, there were unique steps taken. 3D rendering vintage garments requires attention to lots of small and specialized details in order to make sure that fabric is as flowing and life-like in the digital world, as it is in person.
“I knew that this would be an extraordinary project, and Mary rose to the occasion and completely surpassed even my highest expectations. To be able to collaborate and further extend the Darnell Collection’s role as a large design resource was amazing,” said Smith.
Using AccuMark® Silhouette™, McFadden was able to actually trace the finished garments using an advanced stylus. After drawing lines around the entire piece in detail and connecting many dots, she took pictures of the original fabric and used these as fill to reproduce the details in the fabric on the computer. McFadden then pulled the piece up on the AccuMark screen and fit the garment to an avatar, allowing us to see the dress in 3D through this state-of-the-art simulation system.
This year, Gerber Technology’s ideation2015 recognizes The Darnell Collection, a tribute to classic fashion, as it hosts a design competition for college students studying fashion design, with the theme, “Everything has changed, but one thing hasn’t.” Working with dresses spanning the course of five decades, students were asked to submit garments inspired by any elements of the original dresses. There will be a fashion show at ideation2015 (Oct. 29-30) in which the finalists will show their creations, many of them newly 3D-rendered by Mary McFadden. For more about the conference, visit www.gerbertechnology.com/ideation.