OMNISS' Bright Future - Fashion Scout
I interviewed Asya Ter-Hovakimyan and Francisco Zhou of OMNISS for Fashion Scout.
The future, according to OMNISS, is bound to look great. That is unless your current occupation is that of a government worker or hotel maid, in which case stylish artificial intelligence will have taken over your job. That is the world that designers Asya Ter-Hovakimyan and Francisco Zhou decided to focus on for their AW19 collection; a world in which humans and robots live side by side.
Whilst the collection is inspired by an inevitable future, Ter-Hovakimyan and Zhou are confident that "our collections are just a statement, not an opinion. There is no negative or positive opinion, but we know that artificial intelligence will take over some jobs eventually. We wanted to explore what that would look like".
OMNISS’ vision of 2050 is rife with broad shoulders and nipped in waists; typical professional attire accentuated in a conceptual, futuristic manner. The clothing was evidently reminiscent of typical occupations – construction workers and members of the police painted pipes and strolled the set alongside official government workers, all sporting the same bald head stamped with the OMNISS brand logo; the telling sign that the models weren’t human but were, in fact, futuristic, almost other-worldly beings.
Transformation was another strong theme throughout the collection – whilst the conceptual focus is placed on the transformative nature of technology, Ter-Hovakimyan and Zhou hope that "we can integrate this into fashion, too, and have multifunctional clothes that are sustainable because you have one piece that can be worn in many different ways".
The presentation was thought-provoking and beautiful, one which encourages both discussions about and preparation for the future. The diversity of the models was refreshing, a diversity that Ter-Hovakimyan hopes will be reflected in the robots of the future (“can we have some size 12 robots, please?” she laughed).
Despite this seemingly positive outlook on the future, one in which “we can celebrate not having to do the housework because robots will do it for us”, one cannot escape the branding on the models chests and the matching tattoos on their hands which make it impossible to not question whether we are moving towards a world in which humans and robots will live peacefully, or one in which there is little sense of autonomy and self.