Planet City Costumes
Designed in collaboration with Kathryn Walters and Karin Peterson, the Zero Waste Weaver costumes were commissioned for Liam Young's speculative film Planet City — a vision of a hyper-dense future city that concentrates all of humanity in order to return the rest of the planet to wilderness.
The costumes embody the film's logic at a material level: designed for hyperlocal, automated, vertical manufacturing, using polyester fibre theoretically recoverable from the detritus of previous civilisations. Morphic yarns woven into the textile-forms allow the garments to be reshaped by their wearers over multiple lifetimes — designing for ecological time rather than seasonal obsolescence.
Planet City has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Guggenheim, the Barbican, MAAT Lisbon, the Science Museum London, and SCI-Arc Los Angeles. The costumes were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for their permanent collection in 2024.
2020-2021. Zero Waste Weaver costumes designed with Kathryn Walters and Karin Peterson. Costume Direction by Ane Crabtree, Film Directed by Liam Young.
Multimorphic
Zero Waste Weavers - Sulfuric Tunic. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Sulfuric Tunic textile before cutting. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Sulfuric Tunic cutting and layers detail. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Sediment Trouser. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - 3 pairs of Sediment Trouser designs being woven on the loom. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Lazurite Coat. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Feldspar Dress. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Feldspar Dress Textile before cutting. Textile-form Woven 100% recyclable polyester with heat reactive yarn for adaptive fit
Zero Waste Weavers - Sediment Trouser, Lazurite Coat, Sulfuric Tunic - publicity shot for Planet City, Directed by Liam Young
Zero Waste Weavers - Feldspar Dress - publicity shot for Planet City, Directed by Liam Young
McQuillan, H., & Karana, E. (2023) Conformal, Seamless, Sustainable: Multimorphic Textile-forms as a Material-Driven Design Approach for HCI.
McQuillan, H., Walters, K. and Peterson, K. (2020). “Critical Textile Topologies x Planet City: Design practice and research intersect”.
Planet City World - Liam Young.