• 2021 HONOREE
  • Student Awards

A Continuous Conversation

Lily Fanglin Yao

Student Designer

Lily Fanglin Yao


About the Project

This is a boutique design that we collaborated with one fashion design student and developed a boutique experience on the site at 1445 Valencia St in San Francisco. This boutique is designed to create a space that people have continuous conversations with the environment in the past, present, and future. Conversation in the past is the memory of the garment that has been made and used. The present is human interactions with the garment and workers when they visit the boutique. The future is the environment design embedded with advanced technology to build the Augmented Reality, which is the future of the fashion industry.

The design challenge is to build a shopping and working experience for the future and also to correspond to the designer’s line. So this project is not only to fulfill the need of existing clients but also to foresee the future development of the fashion industry that how the fashion industry responds to the universal and environmental changes. The future of fashion will be going on more rely on technology to improve the formal shopping experience to be more virtual, and to use technology to further enhance the comfort when shopping and fitting on the garment. Moreover, engaging all people to participate in social activities like fitting on garments with a revolving closet system that delivers garments they want in handy distance according to their height of reach. Setting different themes by projection, lighting, and sound for them to expect how future experience can manifest on the garment they are wearing. Meanwhile, new memories create along with the experience. With help of technology, different people should have equal convenience in such activity of shopping.

My fashion designer collects second-hand fabric to rework and expands its life for another cycle results in an issue that those historical garments have strong records on their colors and forms which are visible in the environment. Basic-based colors like white and grey respond and give opportunities for being backgrounds of AR and also emphasizes the call of reused garments. Projection is a material that can project images, garments, and also textures on surfaces. Technologies in the boutique aim to provide an accessible environment for all people to have a conversation with recycled garments, human activities, and future shopping experiences.

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