'Descience' fashion show at MIT displays the glamorous side of science - BetaBoston

Glowing LEDS, geometric silks, 3-D-printed headdresses, and cage-like bras were on display at a science-themed fashion show at the MIT Media Lab this week, each a daring blend of science and style. The garments were the product of a mind-meld between teams of scientists and designers from across the world, as part of the first-ever Descience contest.

Each garment echoed the science the researcher in the team was studying. Net-like vasculature inspired the body of a blood-red gown. Finger-like projections in carbon nanostructures turned into ruffles in a tied-to-dye Shiboris skirt. A 3-D printed bra and headdress represented the boxy connections between cell and cell.

After a fashion show at the MIT Media Lab on Monday, a selection of the designs were on display at the Koch Institute at MIT. We caught up with a few of the scientists and designers. Click through to learn more about each design.

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Boston designer Candice Wu echoed the interconnected matrix found in the body in the structured headdress and bra in this design. Her scientific collaborator is Chris Gibson, a bioengineer who studies a rare disease called cerebral cavernous malformation. He is a founder of Salt Lake pharmaceutical company Recursion.

Laura Indolfi, a biomaterials engineer at MIT, and designer Carlos Villamil were winners of the Descience contest, and took home $1,500 each.

The clothes can be worn in multiple ways-a single garment doubling up as a skirt in one arrangement, and as a shift in another, the duo explain. That's just like the cells that Indolfi studies change their behavior depending on the environment in which they grow.

Designer Dieter Kirkwood and Julio D'Arcy, a researcher at University of Washington in St. Louis, collaborated for this design. The finger-like structures created with the Japanese Shibori technique on organza is a nod to how surface area and structure, both related to efficiency of the nanostructures, is a key theme in D'Arcy's work. A bonus: The outfit is embellished with glowing LEDs.

Boston designer Margaret Jackson collaborated with Pedro Ruiz of the Technical University of Denmark to turn his research into this bold and vibrant design. Ruiz studies the network of players in the clean tech industry in Denmark, reflected in the pattern and materials of the skirt (yarn, backed with tracing paper).

Camilla Engblom, who studies bone marrow cancers as a PhD student at Harvard and Mass. General, collaborated with designer Nicole Markoff on this look. The layered garment, with silk, cotton, and canvas, is modeled after a period kimono, where the softest silk is worn close to the skin, and the hardier materials are layered over. This represents the layer of bone and tissue which surround the bone marrow, Markoff said. The tassels worn on the belt and wrists represent metastasized tumors.

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