Studio XO is the outfit – “fashion laboratory”, they would prefer – that made Lady Gaga fly. Or rather levitate in what looked like, and was, an upscaled manned drone. Still, an airworthy dress called Volantis is not something you see every day. They also created “interactive clothes” for the Black Eyed Peas and the “digital mermaid bra” for Azealia Banks, stage clothes that blink and flash in controlled sequences, and outfitted JLS with boots dotted with LEDs and screens. And earlier this month, they moved on to the catwalk, helping the fashion designer Richard Nicoll create a twinkling optic fibre dress, a couture tribute to Tinkerbell the fairy (Nicoll’s show was sponsored by Disney).
It is easy to see these stage costumes as little more than the Nudie suit or Elvis’s sequins with added industrial light and magic, and digital embroidery.
But Studio XO, formed in 2011 by Nancy Tilbury and Ben Males (if you watch Gaga take to the air on YouTube, they are the pair in flight suits), see these spectacular pieces as merely test-runs and teasers, the first wave of a wearable revolution. “There is a tsunami coming in fashion, no doubt,” says Tilbury.
The next step is to take this technology off the stage and offer it to the people. “We were touring with the Black Eyed Peas, standing beside the stage,” says Tilbury. “And we looked out and there were 80,000 phones in the air taking pictures and there was this scream for the idea of these interconnected artists broadcasting to them, these superhuman robots. And we just looked at each other and said, wow, if you could just harness all that emotion and turn it into a product or an experience.” Studio XO intends to do the harnessing. All they have to do is negotiate the how and the who with.
Yet, as we have all learned, no one is ever really sure how people are going to use new technology. And Males suggests that Studio XO is primed to open up a space, create behaviours, that few have really thought about.
“People say there are two types of people interested in this technology,” he argues. “People who are into health and fitness and people who want to increase their productivity. And we believe that misses out a whole other category that is more about expression and emotion.”
The pair have already developed emotional sensors, technology they call XOX, which they claim can register your psychic state. Saatchi & Saatchi used it in wristbands that could gauge emotional reaction to a show reel. Males and Tilbury suggests that this kind of technology opens up new possibilities for human connection and communication, a new body-born visual landscape, what Tilbury calls the “ambient mapping of emotion”.
Males studied mechanical engineering at Imperial College, with a special interest in nuclear reactor design. He also had an interest in fashion which ultimately had a more powerful pull. Tilbury studied fashion at the RCA before moving to the research lab of the Dutch technology giant Philips where she pioneered wearable technology. She also worked with the Media Lab at MIT and set up the MA fashion futures programme at Kingston University. She met Males when he was teaching at the RCA.
Their studio is in a nondescript block in Holloway, north London. There are 3D printers and soldering irons but also scissors, cut-out paper patterns and rolls of fabric. The pair have around 10 staff, whom they describe as “hybrids”: designers as well as coders and engineers who, like them, want to cold-fuse fashion design and technology. “There has always been this problem with this over-the-wall approach,” says Males. “Scientists solve something and they hand it over the wall to the designers. We want to break down those walls.”
The next stage is Studio XOB, their own label. Their first output will probably be a version of the JLS trainers and then a “jacket that can remix content on the body”. “We are making a lot of decisions about where we go next,” says Tilbury. “The products in our mind are designed. But we really need to test the environment to see where we are in terms of people using content on the body.”
They talk of Studio XOB as a platform, as much as a brand; a platform that other brands can jump off. “The big question for the fashion industry at the moment is what is digital,” says Males. “And no one really knows. We want to create this platform that says this is how you use digital.”
“But I don’t think it will be long before we are talking to the likes of Prada,” insists Tilbury. “You can imagine Celine, for example, wanted a dress that pulsates between different shades of deep blue.” Nicoll suggests there is definitely an appetite among designers for those kinds of effects. “I’d love to incorporate it every season; it’s modern, relevant and it pushes boundaries.” But he also points out that, for the moment, cost is a factor. “The price is prohibitive for large-scale production but I suppose it can be seen as modern couture.”
The first wave of wearables, though, might be described as body content rather than couture special effects. “Kids are saying, I’ve had lights in my sneakers, why can’t I put an Instagram image on there?’” says Tilbury. “The idea of the digital skin is so unexplored and that is what we want to do.” They imagine clothes that can download new images, videos and effects.
The problem at the moment is that it can still look like a load of wires, LEDs and mini-screens inelegantly grafted into and on to traditional jackets and shoes. But they are confident radical new materials are out there, being developed in labs around the world but with no clear use in mind. Studio XO will, they say, join the dots.
Next up on Studio XO’s development time line are clothes that can change size and shape at the touch of a button, the application of micro-robotics to textiles. “We haven’t even scratched the surface,” says Tilbury.
