From cells to bodies, planets or galaxies, we're composed of endless recurring patterns: atoms following a certain dance on the rhythms of Nature.

foræva is about two designers putting the past into the future in the shape of a crystal dress. Approached by Swarovski, fashion designer Lana Dumitru and architect Vlad Tenu have teamed up to reimagine tradition for the next space age.

They took the folk pattern from a traditional Romanian rug and digitally re-constructed it from over 25.000 Swarovski crystals into a new kind of artefact. The complexity of this dress has reached an engineering level, only possible through full 3D simulations, algorithmic design methods and digital prototyping.

THE DRESS

foræva is a unique dress carrying a positive and colourful message sent to us from the next century: identity and tradition will not be lost on the path of inter-globalisation, they will evolve in unexpected ways, shaped by technology and emotions.

THE FILM

foræva is a story about humanity, mythology and space. It starts from the next space age and brings the ancestral tradition into the present times. It is the ancient philosophical concept of eternal recurrence but with added space age disco lights.

Film produced by Studioset. Directed by Anton & Damian Groves. DOP and Grading by Radu Fulga. Edited by Niki Georgiev. Post Production by Călin Bogdacenco. Sound Design by Andrei Nechifor

ÆVA

Æva is the female character coming from the future to inspire and guide us through the rediscovery of our quintessential values. She brings a constellation of new possibilities and directions to shape our future heritage. She's the old Eve and the future one, carrying the tradition like the most fashionable thing in the galaxy.

PROCESS

Based on a multi-disciplinary approach, the sculptural design is achieved through completely new ways of using Swarovski elements. Informed by complex algorithms, the crystals are acting as structural elements as well as ornaments in order to form the fluid geometry and continuous surfaces or the dress. Simultaneously, they also behave like coloured 3D pixels, illustrating three-dimensional discrete patterns and organic reliefs.

The design is controlled by a bespoke algorithm designed to interpret traditional patterns and re-create them from Swarovski crystals, in a similar way the traditional sewn motifs were coded and transmitted through generations.

It is a process based design, creating not just one model but a family of them, fully simulated in 3D for a production dialogue with manufacturing robots rather than the human hand. No wonder that it took a team of 15 people almost six months to assemble the dress.

BJÖRK UTOPIA TOUR

The FORÆVA crystal dress designed by Lana Dumitru & Vlad Tenu was worn on stage by magnificent Björk, as part of her UTOPIA Tour in 2018. The show took place at Eden Project in Cornwall, a perfect setup for a concert with a magical stage set designed as a utopian garden where technology and nature are in harmonic symbiosis. The FORÆVA crystal dress appeared as a seamlessly integrated hybrid organism in an ever-changing landscape of moving flora and fauna that hosted the flute septet and the other musicians. Huge thanks to Björk and her amazing team, Edda Gudmundsdottir, James Merry. Photos: Santiago Felipe.

THE TEAM

LANA DUMITRU

Lana Dumitru is a young Romanian fashion designer who has recently finished her research in London and earned her PhD in Digital Arts and Fashion.

You can consider Lana an artist manifesting her beliefs through design and fashion as you would find Lana’s clothing in an art gallery or in a museum, rather than in a shop.

Her original style comes from the fact that she designs all her visuals and patterns, transforming pure white fabrics into strong unique conceptual pieces through the means of digital printing, laser cutting etc.

Lana is the first Romanian designer to oficially collaborate with Puma in a custom print jacket coined “T7 Etno Shake Puma by Lana”

She has been named the best young Romanian fashion designer ( Forbes Award) and she was included by Forbes in Top 30 under 30 entrepreneurs.

Her work has been showcased at London Fashion Week/International Fashion Showcase, Strasbourg Fashion Week, Holon Design Museum, Kalmar Art Museum and Malmö Design Centre Sweden, Salone del Mobile Milano, Horniman Museum London, National Village Museum Bucharest, Cultural Institutes, Art Galleries, Design Weeks and more.

www.Lanadumitru.com

VLAD TENU

Vlad Tenu is a Romanian architect based in London. From architectural design to art installations and teaching, Vlad Tenu’s work involves a continuous explorative research into spatiality, scale and materiality. Inspired by the underlying processes of nature, his workflow is a symbiotic mix of art and science including mathematical and programming techniques materialised into sculptural artefacts, interpretable and adaptable to anything from jewellery and fashion to product design, architecture or simply art.

His artistic work includes award-wining pieces such as Minimal Complexity - the winner of the TEX-FAB Repeat Competition Houston in 2010 and the AIA Houston Design Award for ‘Divine Detail’ 2012. The piece has also been exhibited at London Festival of Architecture and London Design Festival 2012. Solo exhibitions include Synthetic Nature London 2013 and Glimpses of Infinite Symmetry Bucharest 2014, but he has also curated Process, an exhibition on cutting-edge architectural designs in Shanghai in 2014. His previous fashion collaborations include a piece for CLON8 at Paris Fashion Week 2015 and a modular pop-up shop for the shoe designers Del Rio London at LeBonMarche in Paris.

His over ten years of professional experience includes working with practices such as Surface Architects, Urban Systems and currently with the Sterling Prize Winner AHMM.

www.vladtenu.com

Acknowledgments*

This project would not have been possible without the help of an amazingly hard working Foræva team! A huge thank you goes to:

Assembly Team: Mara Grigoriu (Team Leader & Jewellery Specialist), Dimos Moysiadis (Team Coordinator), Ciprian Teodorescu (Team Coordinator), Ana Avram, Stefania Ruslan, Raluca Gheorghe, Alexandra Lulache, Andreea Cucu, Miruna Sandu, Irina Pavel, Casiana Horobeanu, Alexandra Miu, Gloria Ruxandra, Antonia Ispas. Copywriting: Julien Britnic. Photography: Christian Tudose, Oana Radu, Sorina Tigaeru, David Nwickpo. Model: Andra Mirona Axentoi. Hair: George Cozma, Make-up: George Doroftei. Special thanks to: Stefan Florescu, Ana Maria Mihail. *Huge thank you to the Swarovski team (Iulia Boboc, Sylvia Apostolopoulou, Andrei Cristea and the amazing global HQ team), Studioset (Damian Groves, Anton Groves, Radu Fulga and their great production team).

Let’s work together!

A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DESIGN LAB

foræva is about bringing together a team of award-winning designers with innovative super-powers in fashion, jewellery, product design and architecture. It is about design explorations, discovery and reinvention of digital craft in the making of the wearable, the industrial, the artistic and the experiential.

where no other human artefact has gone before.

INNOVATION

foræva is about augmenting traditional fashion crafting with technology and digital fabrication, about redefining pattern making, from the digital print to the digital knit or to 3D volumetric textures and patterns. the journey from an old craftsman's workshop all the way to the data cloud.

3D CAD & DIGITAL DESIGN

foræva is about enhancing tailoring and pattern cutting with 3D digital simulations, computation and advanced form finding tools to create functional, yet sculptural pieces with expressive volumetric effects, fit for both the human wardrobe and the A.I.'s sense of fashion.

PERCEPTION CHANGING

foræva is about changing perceptions, redefining directions and opening new perspectives on existing markets and audiences and also about enjoying the process. foræva is not only about design, but the wireless message it sends through its sensorial and artistic channels.

RESEARCH & PROTOTYPING

foræva is about design at all scales, from the micro scale to the macro, from the smallest crystal and it's setting/fixing on a dress or piece of jewellery to the stage set of the final show. from crystallising the idea to the physical process of making it.

USER ORIENTED DESIGN

foræva is about design for everyone, from the daily clothing item to the wearable piece of technology or the exuberant outfit in a music show. or the couture you will need on the coming Mars colonisation.