Tamagotchi Threads: Designer Manny Katz Experiments with Tech Chic

OLIVIA KARLEN

“I was dead asleep and I woke up in a cold sweat,” Manny said, her hand gestures gave away her excitement as she continued, “The words talking dress came to me.” Her hands closed an imaginary box around the words talking dress, signifying their importance.

Manny Katz, a SUNY Oneonta Fashion Design major, sat down with me for a discussion on her insights on design, the fashion industry, the impact of her upbringing, and her influences on becoming a multi-faceted individual. When I arrived for our interview, Manny was sitting at the big wooden table with her laptop —once gray now colored with an assortment of stickers, wearing a red Adidas tee thrifted from the little boy’s section, a midi skirt with a raw-cut waistband, and a worn messenger bag labeled STRAND BOOKS from the bookstore in the city where her grandfather worked. From her eclectic and effortlessly Brooklyn-chic style, it’s easy to say the words talking dress aren’t something completely out of the ordinary for her.

The talking dress that woke Manny from a deep sleep is a design concept for her upcoming collection for the spring 2024 fashion show titled “Into the Toy Store and Out of the Toy Box,” a celebration of childhood nostalgia and playthings. Manny’s collection is inspired by the 1997 Japanese-made Tamagotchi digital pet toys. These candy-colored, circular toys of pink, blue, and yellow beep, light up and create an interactive experience for children and adults combined to raise a virtual pet that can fit in their pocket. Manny has three Tamagotchis of her own and credits the color scheme and character design of the virtual pets as the inspiration for her designs.

“I remember the birth of tech being something so important and so defining,” Manny said as she discussed the initial stages of her design process for her latest toy-inspired collection. Manny described Tamagotchis as a “digestible piece of technology” and has always been inspired by the color scheme, design, and how it ties into the influences of Eastern fashion and the 90s that she admires. 

Manny spoke fondly of the fashion scene in Japan, expressing that Japan and China make way for designers who have a lot to say and do in terms of toying with the elements of silhouette and proportion. Playing with silhouette and proportion is not a foreign concept to Manny. Her designs often take non-traditional materials to create conceptual, volume-heavy designs with elongated sleeves and out-of-the-box shapes. 

“I sleep and breathe design,” Manny said, “I like to try different things I haven’t seen before.’”

Manny asserted her passion for design when discussing her process of creating. “I try to push the bounds of what I’m comfortable with and what I know,” she said. To push the boundaries of her creativity, the designer works consistently to get out of her head in terms of more conventional silhouettes and proportions and work with what she calls “weird” materials instead of traditional materials. The twenty-year-old attributes her use of out-of-the-box materials to what she described as a “giant opportunity” at Oneonta to work in both fashion design and as the set designer of the Student Fashion Society. As both a fashion designer and set designer, Manny can work with her hands like she always loved since she was a kid in Brooklyn.

Manny’s mother worked in television at ABC 7 her whole life and Manny grew up in the TV studio control room running around and playing with the cameras explaining her fascination with technology in her fashion designs —fashion also fascinating her from a young age. Manny described forcing her mother, grandmother, and babysitter to sit on the couch and watch her as she rolled out her Bounty paper towel red carpet and modeled her make-shift designs out of her old dance costumes and grandmother’s clothes down the runway.

For her upcoming collection, Manny utilizes plastic, pressure sensor technology, and boxes worth of Tamagotchis to create her designs and turn her talking dress vision to reality. Manny’s use of hardware and machinery in her designs reflects where the future of fashion is headed —to a convergence with technology. Like the innovations of Adobe x Christian Cowan’s Project Primrose and the rise of AI and Metaverse fashion, Manny shows us that the process and creation of fashion design is limitless. 

“In traditional art you can use any medium, so I asked myself ‘why can’t I do that?’ Why limit it to fabric?”