Origami + Fashion = A strong statement of creativity

What is creativity? According to Robert Harris, English novelist and former journalist, and BBC television reporter, “creativity is the ability to imagine or invent something new”. Only, he states that “creativity is not the ability to create out of nothing (only God can), but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. Some creative ideas are astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple, good, practical ideas that no one seems to have thought of yet.” (Harris, 1998, Introduction to Creative Thinking)

I agree with him, that is why I strongly believe that being creative in an area includes importing concepts from totally different domains and making use of them like nobody did before. “Go beyond labels. Unfixate, remove prejudices, expectations and assumptions and discover how something can be reapplied”, urges Harris in an article wrote in 1998, called Introduction to Creative Thinking.

Let’s look at fashion and Origami now. Origami is the art of folding paper into shapes representing objects, right? What does it have to do with fashion? Apparently nothing, until you can imagine a paper folded dress. Wearing a paper dress might be a little bit unpractical everyone would say. Wearing day by day, yes. But dressing up models on the catwalk with folded paper dresses in order to make a statement is not unpractical anymore, but rather creative.

Design by Mauricio Velasquez Posada

Let’s go even further. Humans are very solution oriented. That is, one can always find a material that would look and behave like paper, but would be as wearable as fabrics. Then, the Origami inspired fashion could get off the catwalk to the street. There are no limits, but those imposed by our very own mind.

Here’s how Mauricio Velasquez Posada (photos) and Jum Nakao (video) used Origami as a source of creativity in fashion.