Eponymous New York fashion house KAIMIN launched its Meta Couture collection, titled Science of Dreams, on Friday, November 4th with a cross-dimensional art and fashion show at Samsung’s NYC flagship store. The physical-digital line brought the brand together with vSpace to build a virtual metaverse gallery within Samsung’s Decentraland, where visitors can experience an installation of Science of Dreams fashion and artworks by Japanese digital artist MITSUME. Dubbed an “IRL x URL project,” the launch consisted of both the physical show and a digital unveiling at Samsung 837x in Decentraland, which allowed guests around the world to view the collection in real time.
Despite the brand’s relative newness, KAIMIN’s futuristic innovation continually harnesses the power of technology to catapult fashion into the digital space. South Korea-born Kaimin founded her high-tech label, which boasts previous collaborations with Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Björk, in 2016 with business partner Dmitri Pchelintsev.
The brand touts an “unrelenting drive to peek into the future,” designing for an idealized world where inhibitions are minimal and prejudice is nonexistent. Abstraction and primal sexuality come together in unconventional pieces that often use color and asymmetrical cuts to blur the lines between gender boundaries. The underlying sensuality in many KAIMIN designs often explodes with an intergalactic exuberance fit for a video game.
Their inaugural Meta Couture line expands KAIMIN’s affinity for extraterrestrial surrealism into some of their most unpredictable work yet. Frenetic collages of MITSUME’s manga-style art are stitched together into dresses, kimonos, oversized leather jackets, and cross-cut bodysuits that balloon into dramatic shoulder pads or pair with matching over-the-knee leg warmers. Like the garments themselves, the models, styled like they’ve been plucked from another planet’s cyberpunk club scene, remain unwaveringly stoic through color-splashed faces and hair greased into rolls, braids, and mohawks akin to city dwellers in Star Wars.
True to KAIMIN’s commitment to the highly conceptual, the screen behind the runway debuts the digital collection as the in-person models wear the physical. Some are direct matches to the pieces on the runway, while others build further upon Science of Dreams’ tall ambition. The pristinely animated fashion film also shows us the post-apocalyptic world these clothes were designed for as the digitized model-aliens strut, float, and writhe in ways that compliment the staggering detail of both the physical and digital pieces.
Science of Dreams also features an extensive collection of NFT artworks, including prints by MITSUME and 3D-animated films and photos of the KAIMIN x MITSUME line, done in collaboration with German artist Helmut Breineder. The collection acts as a sneak peak into NGEN, KAIMIN’s “creator-empowering Web3 ecosystem,” and will soon be exhibited in Miami, London, and Seoul.
