Designers create garment made from data centre materials

Author: Simon Rowley

Ahead of London Fashion Week, designer, Maximilian Raynor, and data centre company, Equinix, have taken wearable tech to a different dimension with the creation of a one-off garment that brings the internet to life by using recycled materials in new and innovative ways.

Merging high fashion with sustainability, the dress (which was developed with the codename ‘Project Max’) is made entirely from discarded data centre materials – including 3,600m of internet cables, metal nuts and bolts – to showcase the ‘personification of the internet herself’. The garment reportedly took in the region of 640 hours to create.

Bruce Owen, President EMEA at Equinix, explains, “We have worked with designer, Maximilian Raynor, to bring the internet to life through a visually striking piece of design in the form of a dress made from materials at our London data centres. By bridging the gap between physical and virtual, we wanted to create something tangible that works as a unique talking point to highlight the many thousands of connections that are created by Equinix to support economies and societies every day.

“The design pays homage to the physicality of the vital infrastructure that makes up the internet. Rather than some sort of weird magic or unexplainable force that just happens to work, it’s a physical, intricate network of cables, traversing land and sea and creating physical connections housed in Equinix data centres worldwide.

“People have never been more aware of the impact of digital on their lives – especially with the explosion in advancements of technologies like AI, cloud, and quantum that all rely on these physical hubs to expand and collaborate. It’s no coincidence that a key theme at Davos last week centred around the Intelligent age and what that means for economies and societies worldwide.

“Ultimately, this is a light-hearted way of exploring something important. We want the campaign to showcase the internet’s real-world impact on people’s daily lives and businesses, as well as its vital role in the UK economy. Whether that is the development of new drugs to cure disease, or the way we pay for our food – both online and in shops, or even the way we keep people connected to each other over vast distances. By highlighting the value that data centres bring to society, we aim to answer questions surrounding data centre operations and generate global awareness for our fast-growing and ever-important industry.”

For more from Equinix, click here.