Digital fashion design ain’t as easy as it looks

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:30:00 +0000

Contrary to its Hollywood ending, the real hero of "The Incredibles" is Edna Mode, fashion designer to the superheroes. Edna faces a daunting task: outfitting the bulgiest of the bulgy, the stretchiest of the stretchy and the fastest of the fast with premium-grade supersuits that must be able to accommodate things impossible for your average jeans and T-shirt. Any reality-based fashion designer or tailor would run screaming and crying from such challenges. (Vera Wang may range from business casual to eveningwear, but will her clothes stand up, in style, to an arctic-blast-to-inferno scenario, like Edna's creations do? Um, no.)

But who would have guessed that Pixar's real-life computer animators face the same difficulties as Edna? To create costumes for computer-generated (CG) cartoons, you must tailor each garment and stitch every stitch to fit each actor. And when dealing with an actor who's almost seven feet tall, with an 86-inch chest and 52-inch waist, who needs to be able to throw cars, a tailor has her work cut out. In "The Incredibles," animated life imitates animated art. Mr. Incredible may be incredible, but he can't even begin to understand the geometric algorithms necessary to keep his little butt clothed. Welcome to the fabulous world of animated fashion.

Custom jeans for every butt

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 20:30:00 +0000

I waited for Karen inside the front entrance to the store, in between two walkie-talkie flanked greeters and the ostentatiously hip customization department. Hand-painted jean jackets hung from low vestibule ceilings and spiraled up alongside the staircase, ascending toward three floors of Levi's heaven.

The jackets had been cast in a resin-resembling immobilized state, thereby rendering them more suitable for a traction patient than for casual club hopping. Each was signed and dated by the artist and available for $500. I wandered over to the uninviting table next to the greeters and was pleased at the salonesque array of pop fashion magazines. I picked up Interview and waited for mine.

Karen Burbano, former customization and vintage merchandiser for Levi Strauss & Co., is one of the main reasons rhinestones have been everywhere, from J.Lo to JCPenney. By the end of her Levi's stay, Burbano had quietly put the jean mammoth back in the hipster realm with her nearly panoptic trend-seeking gaze. Her own intern to Puff Daddy story was quick yet deliberate, starting in the Jean Archive (which does exist and does house original 501s) and progressing into the budding vintage merchandising department. Around 1999, while on business trips overseas, she began noticing a trend toward craftsmanship and the mark of the individual in many designers' products. A rhinestone spotting in the late '90s led directly to the elite margins of the customization department and eventually caught mainstream-Levi's fire.

Salon.com > Sarah Lidgus

Digital fashion design ain’t as easy as it looks

Custom jeans for every butt