BA (Hons) Fashion Design student Oli Royce won the GFW (Graduate Fashion Week) Innovation Award at the London, U.K., event for a menswear collection that featured engineered prints with text and visual details only visible through an iPad app.
Royce, 22, studied Fashion Design at Nottingham Trent University, U.K., and used the show to debut his “K50” line, a comment on the modern world, according to the designer. The clothes appear one way to the naked eye, but by using the inverted setting on the camera of a smartphone or tablet, the colors are changed and images appear.
“It is about the asphyxiation of the Internet, how that in the digital age and with the speed it is moving, people choose to represent themselves differently online than in person,” Royce says. “Each garment appears differently through technology or in reality. This blurs the lines between the physical and digital world.”
He also used modern techniques in creating the clothes, such as digital printing and bonding, rather than sewing, looking to sports technologies where progress is being made in advanced textile garments.
Royce was among four Nottingham Trent University students who received awards at the annual event. They were selected from over 1,000 students from 40 participating fashion colleges and universities showcasing. The event attracts over 20,000 guests each summer.