Epson renewed its partnership with fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto to support the ‘Hello Istanbul!’ fashion show held on Saturday in Istanbul, Turkey. The partnership, through which Yamamoto uses Epson print technology to create textile pieces, follows on from the V&A's ‘Fashion in Motion: Kansai Yamamoto’ event held in London last year where they also worked together.
Epson has contributed to the latest show by printing out 15 of Yamamoto's creations, which combine traditional Japanese designs and ultra-modern styles. The company spent four weeks reproducing the designs with specialist Genesta inks on the Monna Lisa textile printing system developed by Robustelli of Italy and using Epson's inkjet, and on Epson's SureColor F7100 series and SureColor FP-30160 textile printers.
Yamamoto said: "Recently, a number of new technologies have come to present valid alternatives to the traditional Japanese crafts of dyeing, weaving and sewing. I would include Epson's textile printing in the top class of these technologies, along with fabrics that help control body temperature and technologies that can create 3D knitted designs in one go.
"For this show, I decided to evoke the traditional indigo colours and red sashes once worn by women performing agricultural in Akita, northern Japan. To achieve this I needed Epson to recreate that traditional indigo colour. It requires an incredibly high level of printing technology to create this colour, but I think the whole process has proceeded very smoothly indeed. I sincerely appreciate the way Epson always take a a true artisan's approach to answering my needs with such dedication."
A clip of Epson textile printers being used to create Yamamoto’s designs can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsUqKYLLjh4