Carmem Saito is a designer and researcher working across fashion and interaction design. As a Technē grantee by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Carmem is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Creative Futures at Loughborough University London. Her research examines fashion consumption and tacit knowledge in digital contexts.
YouTube – Me at the zoo (2006)
In 2026 the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) acquired a reconstruction of an early YouTube watch page and its first-ever video, 'Me at the zoo', uploaded on 23 April 2005.This object is comprised of three separate acquisitions, the video file, the period code, and the YouTube GIF ads, setting new precedents for how institutions approach born-digital design collections. As a cultural and social phenomenon, the YouTube watch page is not only emblematic of Web 2.0 and the rise of user-generated content, but also a prescient sign of what would become the creator economy and platform capitalism. YouTube is on display at V&A South Kensington as part of the Design 1900–Now gallery and at V&A East Storehouse.
Work conducted as part of the V&A Design and Digital section led by Senior Curator Corinna Gardner in collaboration with YouTube and interaction design studio oio.
The Materials Library @ British Textile Biennial 2025
The Materials Library explores the origins of fibres that have long clothed and connected us. Developed through a collaboration between British Textile Biennial and The Making Rooms, it lays the foundation for a future Fabric Lab in Blackburn, envisioned as a space for shared experimentation and making with new materials.
From seeds to samples, as well as finished products, the materials on display unfold stories of worldmaking, reflecting a diversity of practices that are simultaneously ancestral and emergent, offering different ways of thinking with and through materials.
British Textile Biennial Associate Curator in collaboration with The Making Rooms and Shannon Sykes.
Na Sala de Jantar
Lace, pearls, ice, marmor, tule: codes that disperse in exchanged messages between shadows. Editorial conceptualized and produced by the “Mutantes na Sala de Jantar” collective - Karlla Girotto, Thelma Bonavita, Bruna Petreca, Carmem Saito, Debora Brandt & Clarissa Lorenzi - published by Revista Key.
Digital Dress Form
3D dress form inspired by the work of Charles James with the intent to start a critical reflection on how we can reclaim acknowledgement our tacit practice in these new digital interfaces. This project was a component submited to The Dynamic Archive.
The Sound of Knitting
The sound of a working Brother KH 910 was recorded for several knitting jobs. The recorded sounds were used to generate a glitch image which then was knitted using the same (hacked) machine.
Soft Omn
The Soft Omn is an embroidered multimeter build using an ATtiny microcontroller, a Flora NeoPixel, a speaker, a LED and conductive thread. This tool can measure resistance and translate it into light and sound.
Entre-linhas
Thinking drawing as a way of understandinf the body as media relating with it's environment. Drawing is not accepting images as representation of reality but as a phenomenon resulting from a comprehension and a relation between body and world. The collection thinks clothes and the process of fashion creation and development as a reverse drawing being the process from 2D to 3D, thinking lines as result of negociation between clothes, body and previous understandments of those. All the pieces are gestural, they were thought, created, patterned and developed as drawings and drawn over. The deformation created by this process, accentuates the movement of the body and prints.
The Hyper Textile
The Hyper Textile is an interactive instalation that captured touch and amplified the vibrations in real time, amplifying the original sound of each textile. As a result, we get an augmented exploratory experience through the relationship that both amplifies the senses and blurs the boundaries between the physical material and its digitally augmented properties, both the design practice and for the viewer.