Victor Clavelly is a CGI artist and beautifully unconventional fashion designer based in Paris, who focuses on transforming the body into creature-like, dominant, powerful and unorthodox forms through 3D rendering and distortion, as well as garments they create to portray dialogues on technology and its relation to the human body, coinciding human evolution with digital progress.

Clavelly sees garments as a vice for extending upon and evolving the human form, using both physical fashion design and 3D experimentation to explore his concepts, manipulating and creating ideas around the body and its place within a digital future, both physically and functionally. Clavelly uses a range of futuristic physical and technological materials to do this, obscuring the human silhouette to explore its changing nature in terms of function, meaning and place within the world as it changes beyond our own comprehension.

How do 3D design and fashion design work together and co-exist for you in your own creative practice?

When I entered the fashion design school Duperre 6 years ago, I started to learn 3D on my own with the aim of designing shapes and volumes. Very quickly I discovered the extent of what the 3D medium could do and became more and more attached to this community with which I was learning, 3D artist, concept artists, sculpt designer etc. In this job I was learning, I really found my place, especially to create images, develop the universes of my collections, the characters that embodied them.

What dialogues do you focus on in your work? Does all of your art follow a continuous narrative- if so, how would you explain it in your own words?

My practice serves me to express myself, to tell stories, since always, very early on from drawing, I imagined stories and universes. I even held a role-playing game for 5 years with my best friend where our only support was dozens of sketchbooks which constituted the lore. Today my work constantly feeds a world in which emancipates the chimeras that I create, like a sandbox game, I constitute a mythology in which I bloom.

A lot of your work, I find, addresses expanding upon and morphing the human form- do you think the human body will evolve as technology evolves, and how do you think this could happen?

I feel that clothing already plays the role of a prosthesis to the body that can augment it, like a suit of armour or a sublime evening dress, and I love fantasizing about imaginary bodies with this medium. But in reality, I'm a bit afraid of transhumanism, I think it will be much less sexy than in cyberpunk 2077.

What can you tell us about your upcoming collection? What narrative do you wish to present within it?

My next collection is called "the judgement of the pontiff". It will be shown at the fashion week of New Orleans at the beginning of March. It tells a medieval world governed by a terrible pontiff, a hero will cross the kingdom to kill him, on his way he will make friends and enemies, but it does not end well.

Is the tactile or digital process of working more valuable to you and why?

I value my material work much more, it is its material and its craft that dissociates it from a concept.

How do you think fashion will evolve with technology in the coming years?

I guess NFT’s??? Not really excited at the moment. I hope technology could help to develop more sustainable circuits, design processes, develop more durable materials and garments, fashion must absolutely evolve in a more responsible system. I hope that the next generation of designers will use it wisely.

What project of yours is your favourite or most meaningful, and why?

I think it was my third collection "the orphan creatures" that I developed in parallel of my master's essay entitled "Portrait in feet of an artificial body", I explored the borders, and the outcomes of my work and put it into practice, on my collection, I learned a lot about the meaning of my work, about me.

What inspired you to choose fashion and 3D design as your creative vices?

It was a while ago already, a lost teenager at the time, but I think video games helped a lot to define what I liked, telling stories, embodying them, fashion and 3D became my tools to realize them.

Are there any art forms you’re yet to explore but wish to in the future?

I develop with a designer and visual artist Benoit Michel, furniture and object, it brings me a lot to collaborate and invest my skills in a field different from mine. Also my absolute dream would be to work with Hidetaka Miyazaki and his studio Fromsoftware, the director of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls etc.

What are your main sources of inspiration?

Here is some artistes and pieces that accompany me for years, Benskinski, Moebus, Giger, Shirow Masamune, dark souls III, Hayao Miyazaki, Joe Hisaishi, Michel Legrand, peau d’âne, lord of the rings, Zelda Twilight princess and his OST, Zelda BOTW + OST, the archiver (tumblr), the neverending story, Pinocchio comencini, Mary Shelley, ghost in the shell + OST, silent hill 2 + OST, RE4 + OST.

What message do you wish to leave behind with your work?

I never thought about it, my work is a space where I can escape and emancipate myself. It is a safe space where anyone is invited to come, an amusement park full of toys and playground equipment, a safe room where you can rest.