“Technology is eroding the difference between haute couture and ready-to-wear,” said Andrew Bolton, chief curator of the Costume Institute, who wants the show to convince viewers that “we need a new paradigm for thinking about creativity.” Not to mention, he added, to raise the question of what wearables really means.
The implication being that, despite the fact that Apple, maker of the Apple Watch (a.k.a. the poster object for wearables), is a sponsor of the show, the answer is not necessarily a gadget you strap on your body.
Rather it may have something to do with what is going on a few miles to the south of the museum, across the East River in a cavernous old industrial building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
That is the headquarters of Manufacture New York, a fashion incubator, factory and research facility housed in a landmark building that was once Storehouse No. 2 of the United States Navy Fleet Supply Base (so noted on a plaque by the entrance) and is now the wearables epicenter of a Brooklyn waterfront reinvention that has been taking place over the last few years.
Forget Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach. Welcome to the land of the Silicon Schmatte.
Huh, Apple is a sponsor of this, interesting.
