
What a physicist sees when she looks at a fancy gown - Geekette
https://www.racked.com/2017/5/2/15518540/met-gala-gown-design-science-technology-engineering
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yodon
The best book I know on high tech clothing design is Spacesuit from MIT
Press[0]. Great story of how the engineers and designers at a women's
underwear company (Playtex) massively outperformed all the "military armor"
inspired hard-shell suit designs put forward by the favorites of the ex-
military-aviation guys running the space flight program at the time.

As someone who has built high-grade muscle and body simulations for the film
industry, trying to respond well to the full range of motions and deformations
of the human body is definitely a non-trivial engineering challenge. In men's
fashion, for example, Italian cut pants look great when you wear them but the
front pockets are guaranteed to lose any coins you're wearing when you sit
down because the engineering tradeoff swung too far one way and didn't address
enough issues the other way (the issue has to do with the way the inner pocket
structure is anchored to the seam of the pants, so it never gets out of place
but also is forced to tilt the wrong direction dumping its contents if you sit
on an overstuffed couch). The spacesuit designers had to get every part of the
body right (though as anyone who has watched The Right Stuff[1] knows the
original suits weren't actually designed to manage a couple key body
functions, which became an issue when launches got delayed).

[0]
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spacesuit](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spacesuit)

[1]
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/right_stuff/](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/right_stuff/)

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chaboud
Oh, this is painful to read...

As a physics dropout (hey, '90s tech boom) who works with theatrical costumers
on a regular basis as the "engineering" guy (who sews, rhinestones, and hot-
glues with the rest of them) there's absolutely a cross-over of material
science, geometry, structure, and other engineering practices with
fashion/costuming. However, this is _almost_ never formalized around a
grounding in physics. Instead, it is ingrained and intuitive in the
practitioner. Ask most fashion designers about manifolds, gradients, and
curvatures, and you'll get blank stares.

Furthermore, if you're going to write up something to pitch fashion to the
sciency/nerdy, how about not asserting that euclidean geometry is purely
planar... Gaussian curvature and it's applications to fabric? Sure.
Perspective transforms per pattern projection and apparent
parallelism/colinearity? Okay. (Neither of these in the article...)

Euclidean geometry is gone when you bend fabric? Oh man. That's where I face-
palmed.

If you're going to pitch to nerds, be rock solid on the nerdy stuff, because
the larger point, that fabric and fashion are engineering and design practices
as much as laptops, cars, and bridges, is arguably true.

I had high hopes for this one, but it comes off as a poorly-crafted attempt to
pitch a personal interest as scientifically dismissed because it's feminine
(rather than artistically practiced), from a woman who, sadly, doesn't seem
well-versed in the technical aspects of the discipline, unselling her point.

Notes:

1) Men design fashion, and have for a long time.

2) It's okay to like something aesthetic and over-the-top without trying to
jam it through a science-nerd hole.

~~~
jessriedel
> Euclidean geometry is gone when you bend fabric?

Do you just mean that everything is still Euclidean in the complete 3D space
of real life? This is true but does not make the 2D-curved-spaced analysis any
less fundamental. _All_ curved manifolds (including curved spacetimes) of
dimension d can be embedded in a Euclidean space of dimension 2d such that the
metric on the former is just the one you get by projecting down from the
latter. Insofar as all the quantities you are working with are confined to the
curved d-dimensional manifold, it's as fundamental a notion of curved space as
ever exists.

~~~
chaboud
I was arguing against the author's assertions that:

1) Euclidean geometry is a plane (though, on re-reading, she said that a plane
is pure Euclidean geometry). So, to be fair to the author, that may well be me
over-reading her statement (could be "within", rather than "equal to").

2) That Burberry's dress on Ruby Rose for the 2017 Met Gala somehow
meaningfully steps outside of Euclidean geometry for it's execution. It's a
layered skirt composed of rectangular-ish cuts. Any apparent colinearity stems
from the center-start of each panel and vertical alignment (aided, visually,
by the aspect ratio of the panels).

Maybe the ruching around the body? I don't see it, and to hang an argument for
involvement of a field on the particulars of that dress is pretty baffling.

The best I could suggest is that _any_ dress could be called non-euclidean
when cut from planar fabric due to the (general) requirement that a dress be
at least a genus one manifold (or a public indecency ticket). I don't see
anything in Ruby Rose's dress that implies any meaningful departure from or
special knowledge of euclidean to non-euclidean considerations.

Except maybe the price tag... That probably bends more than just space...

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ScottBurson
I came across this "Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown" years and
years ago. Nice to see it's still around.

[http://www.neatorama.com/2013/12/31/A-Stress-Analysis-of-
a-S...](http://www.neatorama.com/2013/12/31/A-Stress-Analysis-of-a-Strapless-
Evening-Gown/)

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keithpeter
I've had some good Maths lessons out of dimensioning pencil skirts, pattern
re-sizing, and the 'hang' of a dress related to the orientation of the warp
and weft of the cloth. And there is always the small business angle. Perhaps
more mundane than OP.

Note: I teach basic maths in vocational colleges in UK.

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greekyogurt21
I gotta say, I've never particularly cared for fashion, but when you actually
think about it, creating something that looks good and feels comfortable is
pretty fucking difficult.

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amelius
Fashion is basically wrapping paper for the body.

It adds something, sure, but it's way over-hyped.

~~~
compiler-guy
architecture is just wrapping paper for houses.

UI design is just wrapping paper for programs.

Presentation is just wrapping paper for food.

Interior design is just wrapping paper for homes and offices.

Typesetting is just wrapping paper for words.

It's thinking like this that gets us poor experiences in all these fields.
Aesthetics matter, but treating these things jut as aesthetics misses both
their beauty and their engineering.

And hey, art is cool. Even when it is just art. Paint is just paint, but it
can make beautiful things when handled well. It may not be your thing, but no
need to hate on it.

~~~
amelius
Maybe I sounded like a grumpy old man in that post, but what you say matches
what I think because the things you mention should receive equal attention.

And that includes wrapping paper!

~~~
kxyvr
I would also say that clothing is a form of communication. Certainly, it's one
that you may not value, but I believe it's something that we should be aware
of if we're to be effective communicators. First, there's the forms of
clothing and their association with certain people and certain kinds of
respect. If we see a person dressed as a pastor, that immediately affords them
a certain kind of respect within a certain community. There are fights within
hospitals over the role of the lab coat worn by doctors. Second, clothing is
designed to enhance certain physical characteristics that afford a different
kind of perception and respect. In a man's suit jacket, the button stance is
designed to create a V-effect on the chest, which suggests physical power and
strength similar to a V-shaped figure. The layering of colors within the
clothing is designed to bring attention to the face, which we as people tend
to value very highly.

Again, you may not value these things, but the vast majority of the world
does. One of the things that I struggle with from fresh graduates out of
technical schools is that they don't value it and it hurts them professionally
because their peers and management do. That might not be right, but until one
becomes the boss, it's important to understand and effectively utilize this
language. I'd feel pretty stupid if I didn't reach my professional goals
because I didn't value how I dress sufficiently enough. And, yes, there's a
limit to how much it matters just as there are limits to all language. Though,
that doesn't minimize its impact.

With respect to the article, the physics and modeling of fabric is incredibly
difficult. Part of the reason that clothing manufacturing hasn't been as
automated as other fields is a testament to how difficult it is. Personally, I
find such models fascinating.

~~~
amelius
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a well-dressed man or woman, but fashion is
something you get bombarded with.

As a thought-experiment, replace fashion by typography. Imagine you wake up,
and you have to think about typography, then you get to work, people talk
about typography, you come home and turn on the TV, people talk about
typography, then at some point, it becomes too much. Personally, I'll probably
still appreciate the craft, but I consider it a "solved" problem for myself,
something that others deal with, and I direct my attention elsewhere.

As for the communication aspect of clothing, that's actually something I have
resentment against. You change clothes only once or perhaps twice a day, so
the communication is extremely low-bandwidth to start with. And an even bigger
problem: it reduces the person to one thing. A person wearing a pilot suit
becomes a pilot (only), a person wearing a labcoat becomes a doctor (only).
But obviously people are more than their profession.

And clothing can also be a way to intimidate or to mask intentions (think of
the used car salesman wearing a suit, not because he likes it, but because he
wants to sell that car).

~~~
skybrian
Whether fashion is covered too much or too little seems pretty subjective;
it's going to depend on what you read, etc. The physics aspect doesn't get
talked about much and you don't see much on Hacker News normally, so I
wouldn't say it's over-covered here?

(On the other hand, we do see an awful lot of criticism of UI design and that
includes complaints about typography :-)

