Love Me Digital: FTL Moda Goes VR with Samsung at NYFW

(By Irene Cacciarini; art directed by Pablo Patanè)

The Shows

Virtual reality may still be in its infancy, but FTL Moda was quick to make history with NYFW’s first-ever all-virtual show, in conjunction with FWO and Samsung.

After a successful series of shows during New York Fashion Week in September 2016, Samsung continued their collaboration with Fashion Week Online, RNWY, and multipurpose platform FTL Moda, founded by Ilaria Niccolini.

On February 14th, the 6th day of Fashion Week — and the official day of love — New York’s fashion elite gathered at Samsung’s Space 837 in Chelsea to present the Future of Fashion: fashion shows in pure virtual reality.

New York’s fashion elite gathered at Samsung’s Space 837.

The VR experiences were produced in Milan by the FTL Moda team, creating five stunning shows featuring international designers Limor Ben Yosef, Premal Badiani, Fllumaé, Sonja Tafelmeier, and Invicta, one of FTL Moda’s showroom brands.

The VR experiences were produced in Milan by the FTL Moda team.

At noon, Space 837 opened their doors to fashionistas, trend watchers, and celebrities. It was divided into a showcase, a museum, red carpet, and a VIP room.

Huge Samsung displays and virtual reality glasses brought FTL Moda’s vision to life, and left some guests almost speechless.

At Samsung 837

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Faces

A huge video installation (page top) created by Irene Cacciarini and directed by Pablo Patanè was created for the makeup room, featuring Make Up Pro. According to Ilaria:

“We created a makeup room experience with a long conference table and an extra long white canvas, and we included 100 lipsticks to be used to leave all sort of messages. The backdrop utilized three huge LED screens by Samsung, in a video made up of interchangeable faces. The faces were generated by combining different identities: we like to think of our platform’s vision as an ‘inclusive’ one, that gives voice, stage, and opportunity to all identities that share the common good.”

You can see some of the virtual reality presentations from the event here. Meanwhile, enjoy some of the 2D shows and pictures of the event and featured designers below.

Sonja Tafelmeier