MITHRIDATE – AUTOMATISTE AUTUMN WINTER 2021 – DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi4B6IRHcR8
To discover the new AW21 Automatiste collection, check out our new unique web experience to be immersed within the gamified world of Mithridate via http://automatiste.mithridate.uk/
Guangzhou-based designer Demon Zhang graduated from the prestigious Central Saint Martins’ BA Print Design course in 2008. She worked with Lee Alexander McQueen at his McQueen label and under John Galliano at Dior before launching her gender-neutral, luxury Chinese brand Mithridate in 2018.
At the heart of Mithridate’s DNA is an overarching appreciation for art in all forms and Zhang’s desire to nurture a global community through collaboration. Mithridate has expanded its retail presence in China with multiple standalone boutiques, continuing to operate on a sustainable made-to-order model.
The brand is named after Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus (134 to 63 BC), who is believed to have so fortified his body against poisons with antidotes of his own devising that he became immune to poisoning. Today, the term mithridate refers to any concoction that protects against poison. The word mithridatism is used to define a tolerance to a poison acquired by taking gradually increased doses of it.
Zhang’s creative vision for Mithridate is similarly therapeutic: to provide a sartorial prophylactic to those who continually explore and express their identities through their clothes.
Zhang is constantly inspired by multi-sensory artforms, born of countless hours of research as a fashion student at London’s art galleries and museums, including the V&A, where she first discovered her brand’s namesake and which served as the backdrop to her London Fashion Week debut presentation for AW2020, a milestone that established Mithridate’s international profile.
Automatiste, named after the Surrealist method of suppressing conscious control over the art-making process to give the unconscious mind greater influence in creating, is a deeply personal representation of Zhang’s experience of the restrictive conditions of 2020. Created during a period when travel and external exploration were severely restricted, Zhang and the artists aligned on diving into their inner worlds, exploring the collision of inner thoughts, self-affirmation and self-denial.
Enter the gamified world of Automatiste via a web browser at automatiste.mithridate.uk, where no two experiences of the artwork are ever the same. Explored through a landscape of surreal dream states, the outcome feels more like moving through mixed-medium paintings than fashion.
“Automatiste” by Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti
Automatiste Fashion: Mithridate, represented by CP Concept
Artist Representation of Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti: MTArt Agency
2D Art Designer: Patricia Covarrubia
3D Art Direction & Design: Curry Sicong Tian
3D Art Design & Animation: Liu Xin
AI Art: Kadine James, Lucy Wheeler and Fabio Rovai at The Immersive Kind Studios
XR Art: Aaron Jablonski
Creative Production: In Good Company
Music and Sound design: Tony Cruise
Director of Photography: Tara Violet Niami
1st AC: Paula Crichton
Film Editor: Merlin Ettore
Assistant Editor: Polina Mirovskaya
Art department: Erica Weitz
Model: Cristina Robu
Model Agency: Photogenics LA
Styled by: Chanel Verdult
Hair and Make-up by: Nichole Servin
Colorist: Roy Sun
Lookbook:
Creative Direction: by Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti
Production: CP Concept
Photographer: Aleksandra Klicka @klickaphotography
Videographer: Daniel Sims
Lighting Assistant: Josh Showell
Stylist: Fabio Immediato
Model: Maya Gunn @ Next Model Management, Noah Morely @ AMCK Models
Casting: Emma Somper Casting at Gary Represents
Hair: Jason Goh at Gary Represents
Makeup: Sergio Alvarez at Gary Represents
In the years since the Automatiste collection, Mithridate has continued to gain recognition among global fashion critics as a leading voice in gender-neutral luxury design, with Zhang's interdisciplinary approach influencing a broader wave of Chinese independent designers now commanding international attention.
The Aesthetic Language of Automatiste: Surrealism Meets Luxury Textile
The Automatiste collection translates its conceptual foundations into a precise and demanding material vocabulary. Demon Zhang worked with heritage weaving techniques and high-grade fabrications to produce garments that carry the visual weight of the surrealist artworks that inspired them. Layered silk organzas, hand-painted prints, and intricately constructed volumes define the silhouettes, each one referencing the automatic drawing processes that gave the collection its name.
Rather than imposing a rigid seasonal color story, Zhang allowed the palette to emerge organically from the creative process, resulting in a range that moves between deep nocturnal tones and unexpected bursts of saturated pigment. This approach mirrors the Surrealist premise at the collection’s core: that unguarded instinct produces compositions of greater authenticity than deliberate calculation.
The gender-neutral positioning of Mithridate is not a marketing decision but a structural one. Garments are designed from the outset without reference to conventional gendered sizing or silhouette expectations, allowing the wearer to project their own identity onto the work. In the context of Automatiste, this philosophy reinforces the collection’s central argument: that clothing, like automatic art, should bypass the conscious filters of social expectation and speak directly to the individual wearing it.
Mithridate's Position Within the New Wave of Chinese Independent Fashion
Demon Zhang founded Mithridate at a significant inflection point for Chinese fashion. When the brand launched in 2018, international audiences were only beginning to engage seriously with Chinese independent designers as creative authorities rather than manufacturing proxies. Zhang’s background at McQueen and Dior gave Mithridate immediate credibility within Western fashion circles, but her decision to base the brand in Guangzhou and operate on a made-to-order sustainable model signaled a clear commitment to building something rooted in Chinese creative culture rather than simply translating European luxury conventions.
The Automatiste collection, presented during one of the most disrupted periods in contemporary fashion history, demonstrated that Mithridate was capable of producing work of genuine intellectual and aesthetic weight without reliance on the traditional machinery of runway spectacle. By partnering with technologists, AI artists, and XR practitioners, Zhang positioned the brand at the intersection of fashion, contemporary art, and emergent digital media, a space that has since become one of the most contested and compelling territories in global fashion.
This positioning has influenced a broader generation of Chinese designers who now cite interdisciplinary practice, digital experience design, and identity-driven narrative as central to their work, with Mithridate serving as an early proof of concept for that model.
The Digital Experience as a New Model for Fashion Presentation
The decision to deliver Automatiste through a gamified web experience rather than a conventional lookbook or runway presentation was not simply a response to pandemic-era restrictions. It reflected a considered view about how fashion can be experienced when freed from the spatial and temporal constraints of live events.
The interactive platform built at automatiste.mithridate.uk placed the viewer inside a shifting surrealist landscape where each session generated a distinct encounter with the work. No two users moved through the same sequence of imagery, sound, and animation, a structural choice that aligned the platform’s mechanics with the Surrealist principle of automatism itself. The experience was generated by a multidisciplinary team spanning AI art, extended reality, 3D animation, film, and sound design, reflecting the scale of ambition behind the project.
This approach to presentation carries implications that extend well beyond a single collection. As fashion increasingly competes for attention within digital environments, the ability to construct an immersive, algorithmically varied experience represents a meaningful evolution in how brands communicate with their audiences. Mithridate’s Automatiste platform demonstrated that a luxury independent label could operate at the frontier of digital experience design without sacrificing the material integrity or conceptual depth that defines serious fashion.
