Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan’s Spring/Summer 2007 collection includes a series of mechanical, animatronic dresses.

Something I had never considered before is animatronic fashion. Designer Hussein Chalayan unveiled his latest 2007 collection during Paris Fashion Week last week and it’s full of what Boing Boing described as “Swarovski-crystal-embellished animatronic couture”. Chalayan’s clothes wriggle, zip, unzip, morph and change shape all by themselves.

Photos of the collection are available from Style.com and a video of the show is available online (the moving, shape-changing dresses come in at about the ten minute mark). There’s also a really interesting “making of” film that documents the design and fabrication process for the animatronic dresses (link goes directly to a .mov file).

I’m not sure exactly what could be done with this from a puppetry perspective, but the basic idea suggests some really interesting possibilities.

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21/10/06 Update: More behind-the-scenes info on these amazing transforming animatronic fashions have been posted at Technology Review (link via Slashdot).

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11/12/06 Update: The New York Times briefly discusses how the animatronic dresses work here (thanks to Mary for the link!).