University of Art and Design Linz students look to the future of fashion in this Virtual Design Festival school show, which features projects ranging from upcycled clothing to garments that explore gender boundaries.

The digital exhibition includes 10 projects completed by students studying the Fashion and Technology bachelor's degree at the Austrian design school, which is taught by Ute Ploier and Christiane Luible-Bär.

University of Art and Design Linz

School: University of Art and Design Linz
Course: Fashion and Technology
Studio: Bachelor
Tutors: Ute Ploier and Christiane Luible-Bär

Course statement:

"Fashion and Technology is a bachelor's and master's program for forward-thinking fashion design at the University for Art and Design Linz, blending the interfaces of the digital and the analogue while intertwining traditional and emerging technologies.

"It is aimed at designers who want to explore a sustainable, diverse and inclusive future of fashion.

"Students develop new fabrics such as biomaterials or e-textiles, use additive manufacturing or robotics and combine them with traditional techniques, for example, weaving, knitting or draping.

"International experts support the students in practice-oriented workshops in design, styling, photography, material innovation, fashion studies, digital technologies and presentation strategies."

Photography is by the designers, Stefanie Moshammer and Florian Voggeneder.

Invert by Tania Pérez Hérnandez

"Invert by Tania Pérez Hérnandez plays with human and non-human bodies in virtual space.

"The bodies interact, mix and mingle resulting in novel shapes. The abstract silhouette of the inside becomes visible.

"Peeling off these new body surfaces creates abstract patterns that are transferred back into textile surfaces and three-dimensional, wearable objects. Invert dissolves our ideas of the body to create new analogue and digital physiques."

Student: Tania Pérez Hérnandez
Project: Invert
Contact address: [email protected]

Design (For) A Body by Simon Hochleitner

"Design (For) A Body centres the relationship between body, technologies and design.

"New perspectives for fashion can emerge from digital procedures in design processes.

"The project creates an openness to conceive the body, technologies and form-finding as a complex system, allowing them to flow into one another in a modular fashion and to be open for the most diverse results and states."

Student: Simon Hochleitner
Project: Design (For) A Body
Contact address: [email protected]

Yarn by Belinda Winkler

"Fast fashion has led us to lose our connection to clothes and their manufacturing process.

"How and under which conditions products are made remains invisible. Belinda Winkler has developed a machine which generates three-dimensional textile forms directly from yarn, without the necessity to weave or sew the material.

"The origin of the textiles is thereby made visible and new materials of which the valuableness is perceptible are created. Thus, fashion can be produced more transparently as well as more sustainable."

Name: Belinda Winkler
Project: Yarn
Contact address: [email protected]

Transforming Sculptures by Ursula Vogl

"Reversible transformation, transformative reversal.

"Biomechanical principles and growth process of unicellular organisms, such as radiolarians and slime moulds, inspire the constantly changing textile structures of Transforming."

Name: Ursula Vogl
Project: Transforming Sculptures
Contact address: [email protected]

I Is Another by Shari Bartko

"The 21st century marks a stage in the world's history in one certain aspect: voices for equality get louder.

"Imbalances caused by narcissistic perspectives are discovered. The definition of gender itself is shifting towards the blurriness of its boundaries. After all, what is gender?

"And when we've discovered that reality as a construction – not actual truth: do genders even exist?

"A design language translating these aspects into aesthetical statements."

Name: I Is Another
Project: Shari Bartko
Contact address: [email protected]

Transfer by Ines Kastner

"Motion tracking systems record the movement of garments underwater.

"Data of a dynamic snapshot. Transforming parameters and patterns.

"The perception of immateriality and materiality, dress codes and genres, volumes and norms are changing. Ines Kastner is researching different layers of transfer and developing a new way of creating volumes and shapes."

Name: Ines Kastner
Project: Transfer
Contact address: [email protected]

In_Between_Spaces by Aaron Alvin Keller

"The fashion industry is contributing to the environmental and social crises on an ever-increasing scale.

"Overproduction, huge transport distances and massive labour law violations are the result of an endless race for change in fast fashion.

"This project examines an alternative production method of clothing and tests the whole garment weaving as an experimental construction and production method.

"The basis of the practical method is the creation of multi-layered composite fabrics, which are transformed from a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional garment only by cutting into them."

Name: Aaron Alvin Keller
Project: In_Between_Spaces
Contact address: [email protected]

Chemical Aesthetics by Sophia Höretzeder

"In her work Chemical Aesthetics, Sophia utilizes the uncontrollable and disobedient formative tendency of substances as a design tool for slow fashion.

"Her starting point was the work of the chemist Friedlieb Runge. He discovered a new method for the breakdown of chemical mixtures that is still used today – paper chromatography.

"The wonderful patterns that resulted were surprising. Friedlieb Runge himself said about these pictures: 'No painter, even the sun, is able to produce the same thing twice'.

"Chemical Aesthetics creates sustainable dyeing and printing processes."

Name: Sophia Höretzeder
Project: Chemical Aesthetics
Contact address: [email protected]

Re_Sampling by Miriam Eichinger

"Re_Sampling researches a natural and unexplored raw material for fashion – microorganisms.

"In the future, bacteria will be used to create cellulose yarns for spinning and weaving textiles.

"Growing these fibres directly in the lab makes for a more sustainable approach than through agriculture, which uses water, pesticides and land."

Name: Miriam Eichinger
Project: Re_Sampling
Contact address: [email protected]

Material Matters by Melanie Nutz

"Material Matters by Melanie Nutz is researching novel material concepts and production methods.

"Circular design strategies by deconstruction and reconfiguration existing materials are closing the loop.

"The upcycling method breathes second life into cotton shirts that have been deconstructed, shredded and hand-woven into new clothes. The collection is one-size and can adapt to individual body shapes.

"Material Matters proposes second-hand clothing as a valuable resource to create durable and future-proof fashion."

Name: Melanie Nutz
Project: Material Matters
Contact address: [email protected]

Virtual Design Festival's student and schools initiative offers a simple and affordable platform for student and graduate groups to present their work during the coronavirus pandemic. Click here for more details.