Hooray for Fashionable Fullerene

Despite fashion is supposed to be all about creativity, it’s difficult to deny that there are moments when you find it hard getting excited about garments and accessories.

It’s bizarre but, at times, I feel that all designers and quite a few fashion lecturers teaching in the main universities all over the world, sit down around a table together with some agents from trendsetting companies and suddenly decide that, for the next season, this specific painter or that specific palette lifted from a particular work of art will have to inspire everything, from what we will all wear to what they will teach to students.

As a consequence, we end up seeing the same inspirations all over the place, from the main catwalk shows to graduate fashion fairs.

Launched a long time ago by pioneers like Nanni Strada, the "architecture-fashion" trend has for example strengthened only in recent years, thanks to exhibitions, collaborations and events dedicated to this unlikely connection.

Now, while this topic deeply interests me as shown also in this week's posts, I do think that it would be interesting to see what would happen if we added to this connection a third element, say science.

I'm sure that, in a few years’ time, science will play a major role in fashion and with this term I do not only mean the technological developments that may lead us to discover advanced techniques to produce fabrics or create garments, but I also refer to the application of chemistry, biology or physics to disciplines like fashion. 

If you’ve already used Google this morning, you may have noticed how one of the letters in the search engine banner has been transformed into a Fullerene molecule to pay homage to the 25th anniversary of its discovery.

Fullerene is a good example of where architecture and science can lead you. This name  indicates a molecule composed entirely of carbon that may have the shape of a sphere (buckyball), ellipsoid or tube (nanotubes or buckytubes).

Harold Kroto, James R. Heath, Sean O'Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley discovered for the first time in 1985 what they called “buckminsterfullerene” (C60), the smallest fullerene molecule with the structure of a truncated icosahedron, a sort of soccer ball made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge.

The name given to the molecule was a tribute to Richard Buckminster Fuller, since the molecule called to mind the geodesic domes created by the visionary architect and engineer.

Since 1985  structural variations on fullerenes evolved, including buckyball clusters (mainly used in materials science, electronics and nanotechnology), nanotubes, megatubes, polymers, nano "onions", linked "ball-and-chain" dimers and fullerene rings.

Researches about fullerenes are obviously continuing, especially in the field of nanotechnology, heat resistance and superconductivity (will such fields provide us with innovative fabrics and yarns one day?), but also in quantum mechanics.

Chemistry can definitely be a strategy for design, inspiring both fashion and interior design and inspiring new silhouettes, structural arrangements, studies in three-dimensionality and spatial systems.

C60 is for example the most symmetrical molecule since it has a rounded shape.

So, if you are a fashion student, here are two inspirations for you today: 1. see what kind of shapes the structure of fullerene can inspire you (also check out the embedded video at the end of this post for further inspirations); 2. moving from its harmony, analyse another structure, the "tensegrity", a term that describes complex forms that use simple elements held in balance by opposing forces.

This term combines the "tensional integrity" concept devised by Buckminster Fuller, though the principle was discovered by his student, artist and photographer Kenneth Snelson.

As stated above, the "tensegrity" indicates a structure held in balance by the tension of cables compressing it at key nodal points, so the main principle behind it is based on tension and compression of vital forces, an idea that may be easily applied to fashion design.

I'm sure that, if studied carefully, molecules like the fullerene and structures like the tensegrity will guarantee some new and radical approaches to fashion design for years to come.

The most important thing to do at the moment is start thinking out of the box, possibly mixing in your creative cauldron that little bit of magic that scientific subjects can provide us with. 

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Comments

[Special Occasion Dresses]

Omg. I noticed this. So this is the meaning.