Fashion-Forward Virtual Reality Headsets

Thanks to creative studio Field, you can see an Oculus Rift VR helmet that makes you feel like you’re in a sci-fi movie, or at least a member of the band Devo. These sleek headsets, of which they have three models, put an ultramodern carapace over the components of the Oculus Rift headset, making a bold statement about how close to our collectively imagined future we have already come.
Building the helmet was a multi-step process, which began with taking a foam mold of a person wearing an Oculus Rift and headphones. They then built the artistic aspects of the headwear out of multiple layers of fiberglass, resin, polypropylene and similar synthetic materials. Once the outer shell was finished, the builders could insert the VR components with room to spare for a wearer’s head.

From the outside, Field’s headsets represent the close link between the future imagined in past decades and the capabilities of our present society. The designs for their Oculus Rift headsets call to mind the clean-lined, shiny sets of Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. Though these are less like urban-apocalyptic visions of more recent stories, they still represent our collective idea of “the future” more than other imagery.
The interior similarly plays with the blurring lines between imagination and reality, allowing the wearer to interact with a virtual reality program via the motions of his head and wrists via accelerometers and wrist controllers that connect with the Oculus Rift console. Field custom-wrote all software required to connect the Oculus Rift to the custom hardware components of the helmets.

Field debuted the headsets at the Violescence art expo, which took place at The Hospital Club in London’s Covert Garden between the May 29 and 31.

Field