Designing The Impossible: Q&A With Fashion Designer Diana Eng

For fashion designer Diana Eng, fashion is all about exploring as yet unrealized possibilities. Imagination is her greatest inspiration, as she strives to create designs that are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, all the while turning to science, mathematics and technology to make her creations come to life. Like some of the creators we’ve brought you in previous weeks (Vega Wang, Mortiz Waldenmeyer, Cassette Playa and Amapo), Eng views technology as both a source of inspiration and a tool that enables her to explore her unbridled creativity. She is among a select group of designers who are working on the very edges of what is possible to create work that is extraordinary.

Last week we chatted with Eng, a former Project Runway contestant, about her latest project, Fairytale Fashions, and her creative process.

The Creators Project: You're a self-described "fashion geek" who uses technology in fashion design. Why did you decide to pursue this hybrid?
Diana Eng: Well, first of all, I'm not purely interested in electronics because at the end of the day I'm ultimately a fashion designer. I'm interested in creating interesting new fashion designs. Electronics are just one way that you can create new fashion designs, but there are lots of other ways like with biomimetics or sometimes I'll use mathematical patterns, especially when I do knits. I guess I kind of like taking on these things as research projects and thinking about what kind of new technique, method, or application I can use with the fashion to create something new. When I'm designing I almost want to create things that seem impossible, which is so different from what you normally find in fashion. When I'm designing I often feel like I'm inventing something or making something new possible for fashion.

So what is your creative process like then?
The way I start is the way fashion designers usually start—I make mood boards and collect images of all the things I'm interested in at the time. While I'm doing this I read a lot of magazines so I can figure out sort of what's on trend, because you can create something, but you don't want it to be something people can't relate to.
With my Fairytale Fashion show, for example, at the time I was really into sea creatures. I went on a snorkeling trip and saw all these beautiful sea creatures and they have these really beautiful slow movements under water. The more I researched it, the more it felt as if these creatures were from another world. Then I collected all these images and was like, ok, how can I incorporate this? How can I make this in real life? I really wanted to put it into practice somehow and capture this beauty in a garment.

That's really interesting. One of our creators, Vega Wang, was also inspired by underwater sea creatures for her fashion-tech collection. What do you think it is about fashion and technology that seems so relevant right now?
I think that there's a lot more room for people to merge disciplines now because of the internet. I don't actually know that much about electronics and computer programming, but I'm still able to do it because I know a little bit about it, and I can just look up all the stuff I don't know online. I think now is kind of an interesting time because people are really able to make anything they want—they can just find instructions for how to make it online, whereas before all the knowledge was very difficult to come by. Now you can find more information easily.

Tell us more about your latest project, the Fairytale Fashion collection.
Fairytale Fashion was a project that was sponsored by Eyebeam. I wanted to explore more of what technology could bring to fashion, so the ideas behind Fairytale Fashion are that these are all designs fit for a fairytale. They're kind of imagined and seem like they shouldn't be real. I actually reached out to school groups and talked to school children about it, so the school children would come up with ideas of what they would imagine these fairytale outfits would do, they came up with things like superhero outfits that use deployable structures and all different things like that. Then I took the ideas and incorporated them in the collection and figured out how to actually make the ideas work and happen in real life. I guess with Fairytale Fashion I was thinking about how to make things that should only be imaginary come alive using technology. The technology made it possible.

Watch a video of Diana using technology to create a sea urchin purse and more at Eyebeam on our sister site Motherboard.

What are you working on right now?
I'm trying to make a line now because I decided, ultimately, as a fashion designer, it's nice to have fashion shows but at the end of the day designers are really making products and I want people to have the things that I design and enjoy them. It's a very long road to figuring out how to get these things manufactured. Right now I'm thinking about what sorts of things you'd want to have as a product, because you probably wouldn't want to purchase an inflatable dress, and doing market research on that. At the same time, I am looking at what materials are available and what sort of things can be manufactured. So right now it's all very much in the beginning stages.

All images courtesy of Lindsey Sundbloom and Shaun Mader.