ANREALAGE SS27 TURNS E-INK INTO A SECOND SKIN
For Spring/Summer 2027, Anrealage takes the idea of a wardrobe update rather literally. Kunihiko Morinaga’s Skin collection, presented during Paris Fashion Week at the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, imagines clothing as an outer layer that can shed, mutate and regenerate. Drawing parallels between biological skin and the interchangeable skins of digital avatars, the designer builds the collection around surfaces that refuse to stay visually fixed. The premise feels familiar to anyone who has changed an avatar outfit in seconds; translating that behavior to the physical body is the more complicated part.
The transformation begins relatively quietly. Second-skin bodysuits carry pixelated graphics and trompe-l’œil versions of familiar garments, while overlapping scalloped forms gradually detach from the printed surface and become physical scales. Toray Ultrasuede appears among the materials, alongside translucent elements made with Japanese washi, shifting the collection between fabric, graphic image and something closer to an engineered interface. The layered surfaces reference chromatophores — pigment-changing cells found in living organisms — turning biology into a visual system for clothes designed to behave rather than simply sit there.
3D PRINTED SCALES SHIFT COLOR WITHOUT A SCREEN
That behavior becomes more literal through SEKISAI’s Effective Skin technology. 3D-printed scales are formed and colored so their appearance shifts depending on the viewing angle, producing an optical effect as models move through the space. The pieces of Anrealage do not need a conventional display to appear animated: geometry, surface and motion do most of the work. Ridged skirts amplify the effect by turning the scales outward, somewhere between Op Art and a wearable rendering glitch, while keeping the mechanism resolutely physical.
Then the collection goes electronic. Six armor-like cocktail and evening dresses are covered with between 1,000 and 2,000 individually controlled electronic-paper scales using e-ink technology. Unlike LEDs, the elements do not generate their own light; the electronic paper itself changes color, allowing pigments and patterns to travel across the body before draining back into gray and reassembling into new configurations. Beneath the decorative shell is a dense network of wiring connecting the individual modules, with AI-assisted mapping used to organize the circuitry. Suddenly, embellishment starts looking suspiciously like hardware.
KYOCERA FOREARTH EXTENDS THE FASHION TECHNOLOGY EXPERIMENT
The digital layer sits alongside another, less theatrical technology in the collection: Kyocera’s FOREARTH textile-printing system. The process uses proprietary water-based pigment inks and reduces water consumption associated with conventional textile printing by completing production through printing and drying rather than water-intensive steaming and washing stages. Kyocera states that its system uses 0.02 liters of water per kilogram of fabric, including maintenance, while supporting high-definition printing across materials including cotton, silk, polyester and nylon. For Anrealage, which has collaborated with FOREARTH across several previous collections, printing becomes another way of programming the garment’s surface.
Morinaga closes the loop by bringing back the LED-based digital camouflage explored in the previous season, now flashing through fiery colors in reference to Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, a recurring symbol of rebirth throughout Skin. The finale makes the collection’s proposition unusually literal: clothes can behave like a third skin, neither entirely textile nor entirely screen, capable of changing its visual identity without changing the person underneath. After more than two decades of Anrealage experiments with reflection, light, shape and digital effects, the future of fashion here is not another wearable gadget. It is the garment itself becoming the device.
