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At Paris Fashion Week, six dresses appeared to come alive on the runway. Covered in hundreds of tiny scale-like panels, the garments shifted from muted gray tones into bright colors and intricate patterns, transforming without the models ever having to change their clothes.
The futuristic designs are part of ANREALAGE’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, SKIN, created by Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga. For the collection, the fashion house partnered with E Ink to cover six dresses in its Prism 3 electronic-paper technology. Each garment contains somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 individual E Ink pieces arranged across its surface like scales. Other designers and technologists have also experimented with using digitally transforming dresses on the runway, such as Adobe’s Project Primrose Dress.
The result makes each dress look almost like it has a skin of its own. Colors can disappear and return, while entirely new patterns move across the same garment. Unlike the glowing displays we normally associate with screens, however, E Ink doesn’t emit light. Instead, the material reflects the light around it, much like paper does, and only requires power when its image or color changes.
That idea fits directly into the theme behind SKIN. Morinaga imagined clothing as an outer layer that could constantly be shed, renewed, and rewritten, much like skin itself. The collection also drew inspiration from the phoenix and its endless cycle of death and rebirth. During the runway show, the electronic dresses faded into gray before suddenly returning in vivid colors and changing patterns alongside a live performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
“ANREALAGE has a long history of combining craftsmanship, technology, and imagination in ways that challenge how we see everyday materials,” says Naoki Sumita, president of E Ink Japan. He adds that the collaboration shows how traditionally static surfaces can become “dynamic, expressive experiences.”
Experimenting with technology is nothing new for Morinaga. Over the years, ANREALAGE has created clothing that changes color under ultraviolet light, garments that move between transparent and opaque, LED-covered dresses, and even pieces designed to seemingly disappear into their surroundings using digital camouflage. Rather than treating technology as something separate from fashion, Morinaga has continually used it as another material to play with.
With the E Ink dresses, that experimentation also opens up an interesting possibility: one garment can have many different appearances. Instead of a dress being permanently tied to a single color or pattern, its surface can continue to change long after it has been created.
ANREALAGE’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection, SKIN, allows dresses to come alive on the runway.
ANREALAGE Spring/Summer 2027 “SKIN” collection. (Photo: courtesy of E Ink Corporation)
The unique material reflects the light around it, much like paper does, and only requires power when its image or color changes.
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The result is a striking combination of technology and fashion that left runway-attendees shocked and delighted during Paris Fashion Week.
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Source: anrealage wraps dresses in up to 2,000 e-ink panels for color-changing ‘skin’
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