Wearable Technology Hits Met Gala Red Carpet, Robot Inspiration Follows

The theme of “technology” was taken quite literally on the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art ’s annual Costume Institute gala in New York last night, with celebrities including Claire Danes and Karolina Kurkova both stepping out in light-up eveningwear looks.

Danes wore a pale blue Zac Posen dress made from a fiber optic woven organza. Reminiscent of a modern-day Cinderella, the fairytale look came alive in the dark, glowing from head-to-toe. Posen teased the gown via his Instagram channel, where followers got to see the impressive lights working to full effect.

Supermodel Kurkova meanwhile was dressed in a look designed by Marchesa, in collaboration with IBM . More than just a garment covered in three-dimensional LED flowers, this was also an intelligent piece of work that reacted to online conversation about the event in real-time throughout the night.

Using IBM Watson’s Tone Analyzer, the cognitive dress tapped into social sentiment from Twitter , changing color according to five moods: joy, passion, excitement, encouragement, and curiosity. “Please comment on all of my social accounts b/c my dress will react to your emotions!” tweeted Kurkova.

Deciding what those colors would be was also a product of Watson. IBM fed the system hundreds of images associated with Marchesa in order to understand and learn the brand’s color palette, before suggesting ones that would both be in line with it aesthetically and ideally represent the emotions from a psychological perspective.

From there, the team also turned to IBM partner Inno360 to find the appropriate fabric for the garment. More than 40,000 sources for fabric information were narrowed down to 150 potential options, before IBM Research-Almaden then stepped in to identify which of those ones would respond well to the LED technology. A resulting 35 recommendations were given to the Marchesa designers to select which one they wanted to use.

This combination of man working with machine tapped in perfectly to the theme of the Met’s upcoming exhibition, Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.

The idea of the exhibition is to showcase the craftsmanship of haute couture through to the onset of mass production and the evolution of tech in today’s creations – from 3D printing to laser cutting and computer modeling. Not a story of wearables by any means, nor particularly a futuristic view, it’s intended as an exploration of the dichotomy between hand and machine since the 19th Century.

Others attending the gala however took the invite to mean something more akin to robotics. Numerous stars including Jourdan Dunn and Lady Gaga, accordingly all dressed in structured silver looks that evoked a clichéd cyborg vibe.

Kim Kardashian West referred to herself as a “sexy, blingy robot” in Balmain (appropriately coordinating with husband Kanye), Taylor Swift said she was a “futuristic gladiator robot” in Louis Vuitton, and former One Direction star Zayn Malik turned out with metal sleeves over his Versace suit. The winner in the android stakes however: socialite Julie Macklowe in a full C-3PO-esque mirrored jumpsuit.

Other metallic looks came courtesy of Naomi Watts in Burberry, Gigi Hadid in Versace, Rita Ora in Vera Wang, Kate Upton in Topshop, and Kylie Jenner, also in Balmain.

Elsewhere, the concept of “technology” was more intricately interpreted through the materials used. Perhaps a reflection on the true future of our wardrobes, numerous looks experimented with different textile developments and nodded to fiber science through a dedication to sustainability.

Emma Watson, for instance, wore a custom Calvin Klein Collection dress created in collaboration with Eco Age in a sustainable cotton, satin and taffeta, woven from recycled plastic yarn. And model Amber Valletta wore a sustainable H&M look made from silk taffeta and embellished with over 1,000 hand-cut and sewn organic silk petals and recycled plastic sequins.