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"Outside the entrance to \u201CFashion and Technology\u201D&amp;nbsp;at the Museum at FIT,&amp;nbsp;Hussein Chalayan\u2019s Spring 2007 runway show plays on a loop. Animated by elegant, invisible robotics, the clothes begin to metamorphose through decades of fashion history. A chaste Edwardian gown sheds its corsetry, revealing a beaded flapper dress. A curvaceous \u201950s silhouette shrinks into a \u201960s shift. Chalayan\u2019s lyrical, shape-shifting collection serves as the exhibition\u2019s epigraph as well as its teleological conclusion. Told exclusively through selections from the museum\u2019s costume collection, \u201CFashion and Technology\u201D (on view through May 8) charts technology\u2019s influence on fashion from the Industrial Revolution to the present day.Inside, a video loops Burberry\u2019s 2011 holographic runway show with models bursting into thin air. Freedom of Creation\u2019s 2005 3-D printed garment prototype sits in a glass case. After these expository frontispieces, you\u2019re taken back to the Industrial Revolution. Spinning jennies, sewing machines, and synthetic dyes are shaking up the means of clothing production. A machine-knit men\u2019s waistcoat from 1870 and a machine-stitched wedding costume are evidence of a nascent fashion industry. Cotton supplanted linin and wool as the fabric of our lives.As one heliotrope taffeta day dress from 1860 can attest, the color purple \u2014 once reserved for monarchs and clergy \u2014 became available to the burgeoning bourgeoisie though the invention of&amp;nbsp;aniline dyes.&amp;nbsp;With the onset of Art Deco, we begin to see the deployment of technology as, not only a means, but an aesthetic. One jacket of avant-garde persuasion is decorated with zeppelins and skyscrapers. Newfangled substances like cellophane and Bakelite became the scintillating, confetti-like stuff of flapper dresses. Charles James and Elsa Schiaparelli married form and function by deploying the zipper as a decorative device. One forward-thinking (yet sadly anonymous) designer created an evening bag with an electric plug and socket as a clasp.After the Spartan ethos of WWII, when fashion generally courted necessity rather than imagination (rayon became big during this era because it replicated the look of silk at a fraction of the cost), the space-age couture of Andre Courreges, Pierre Cardin, Emilio Pucci, and Yves Saint Laurent signaled a resurgence of formal experimentation. A trio of mini dresses from 1968 \u2014 a brown Courreges designed for recreational space travel, a hot pink Cardin made from three-dimensional embossed fabric, and a Harry Gordon photo print dress depicting a rocket launch \u2014 encapsulate the giddy excitement of the Space Race.In the 1990s, fashion became infatuated with a new technological frontier. The celestial mystique of outer space became eclipsed by the vast cosmic Xanadu of cyberspace. Jean Paul Gaultier\u2019s \u201CMad Max\u201D-inspired spandex jumpsuit, with its biomorphic matrix of spots, is a pioneering example the now-ubiquitous digital print. Kenneth Richard\u2019s iridescent vinyl mini skirt and belly shirt ensemble is the bottled essence of late-\u201990s cyber kitsch.The exhibition brings you up to date with an outfit from Mandy Coon\u2019s Spring 2013 collection. Inspired by the seismic motions of a MIDI audio file, the look is evocative of the much-ballyhooed&amp;nbsp;New Aesthetic, an artistic zeitgeist based on the collision of the digital with the real. A reaction against retro-minded post-postmodern hipster culture, the New Aesthetic is a jamboree of pixilated, aggregative cyber-reality. Louise Gray\u2019s 2012 dress, which lifts the pattern of a QR code as a graphic trope, fits neatly into the New Aesthetic\u2019s vocabulary of 8-bit graphics, hash-tags, and animated GIFS. But,&amp;nbsp;as critic Bruce Sterling has suggested, this vocabulary can be laden with spurious metaphysical claims and uncritical machine love.The meandering trajectory of fashion has been paved by successes and failures. Some innovations have become time-tested conventions (see the zipper or the sewing machine), while others, such as the nylon wash-and-wear business suit, seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Though it was made in 1997, Simon Thorogood\u2019s hooded gown is chillingly relevant. It\u2019s evocative of a Jedi\u2019s mantle and it was actually inspired by real-life \u201CStar Wars\u201D technology: the shape of pilotless aircraft drones. It is one of the few garments in the exhibition that gives pause to technology\u2019s inevitable dark side.&amp;nbsp;For all its intelligent curation and encyclopedic detail, \u201CFashion and Technology\u201D misses an opportunity. The show\u2019s tidy technological determinism doesn\u2019t leave room for examination of the social, economic, environmental, and human consequences of mechanization, from cotton\u2019s role in the 18th-century slave trade to the economic exploitation the drives fast fashion\u2019s supply chains.The future of fashion can simultaneously inspire curious wonder or Luddite horror. Clothes could be decked with LED lights, rigged with microscopic robots that monitor your heartbeat and check your Facebook. Garments could be printable from the comfort of your home. At the end of the exhibition, a screen displays backstage footage of Diane Von Furstenburg\u2019s Spring 2013 show, recorded on Google glasses worn by the models and by DVF herself. The technology \u2014 a tiny computer that lives on your face \u2014 is creepy. The video\u2019s content \u2014 mostly the backs of models heads \u2014 is boring. The glasses \u2014 a thin aluminum headband with nose pads \u2014 are ugly.The Google/DVF collaboration cannot be further from the protean magic of Chalayan\u2019s show. The two films bookend the possibilities of what partnership between technology and fashion might mean. It can remove the human hand from construction or lend a hand to skilled craftspeople, entrench neo-Brutalist design aesthetics or allow for formal experimentation, and produce cyborg-like disassociation or foster critical engagement&amp;nbsp;To see images from the Museum at FIT\u2019s \u201CFashion and Technology\u201D exhibition, click on the slideshow.&amp;nbsp;Visit&amp;nbsp;Artinfo.com/fashion&amp;nbsp;for more fashion and style news.BLOUIN Fashion is now on Twitter. 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