really about fashion and technology per se; it's more about techniques and processes.

I think people are expecting the exhibition to be about robots, and it really

isn't about that at all. It's about rather subtle hidden technologies.

The show's taking place in the Lehman Wing and we've actually created a building within a building.

It looks like a 21st-century hybrid between traditional couture atelier and a scientific laboratory.

And it unfolds as a series of rooms really based on the traditional

métiers of the haute couture.

One of the garments that inspired the exhibition is a dress by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel.

Initially sketched by hand, by Karl, and then it was manipulated on the computer to give a pixelated, baroque pattern.

Then the pattern itself was hand-painted onto the train then transfer printed by machine

and then finished by hand by Lasarge with gemstones.

It embodies both the handmade and the machine made within one garment.

The exhibition itself is structured around Diderot's encyclopedia, the first time that

fashion was elevated to the same status as arts and sciences.

What's interesting is that the métiers within Diderot's encyclopedia

still structure the métiers of the haute couture.

Embroidery, featherwork, and artificial flowers.

And on the lower level, you'll come across pleating, lacework, leatherwork,

and a special category on tailoring and dressmaking.

As you walk through the exhibition there's conversations or case studies between pret-a-porter

and the haute couture in terms of the processes involved with those techniques.

People are so preoccupied by the next thing that there's a lack of appreciation

in the making of fashion. Part of the exhibition's intention is really to make people look at

garments—that it's not just the hand and the machine techniques that go into the making

of fashion but the concepts embodied within one particular garment.

Instead of seeing the hand and the machine as dichotomous, the show attempts to show

it more as a continuum or spectrum of practice. I think technology should be used especially

by good designers, as a way to enhance their design practice. And I think that within fashion

people sort of cling on to those notions of the haute couture and ready-to-wear.

And I think what I'm finding is that the gap is really diminishing.

The exhibition is trying to come up with a new paradigm within fashion that's not so

polarizing as the haute couture, ready-to-wear, handmade, machine made.