From the cloth-draped automatons of the Prague stage to the precision-engineered couture of MaisonRoboto's Paris atelier, the story of dressing machines spans a century of imagination, innovation, and the eternal human desire to see our creations reflect our own image.
Robot fashion begins on stage. In January 1921, Karel Capek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) premiered at the National Theatre in Prague, introducing the word "robot" to the world. The play's "robots" were played by human actors dressed in simple worker's clothing, establishing the foundational idea that a robot should be dressed according to its role in society.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, real-world mechanical automatons began appearing at exhibitions and World's Fairs. Westinghouse's Elektro, a 7-foot robot displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair, wore no clothing but was designed with a deliberately humanoid silhouette. The decision to leave Elektro unclothed was aesthetic: its creators wanted visitors to marvel at the mechanism, not the costume. This tension between revealing the machine and clothing it continues in robot fashion today.
The golden age of science fiction cinema established visual archetypes for robot appearance that persist today. Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956) wore an elaborate full-body suit that was simultaneously a costume and a character in itself. The aesthetic choice was mechanical: rivets, tubes, dome head, accordion limbs. Fashion, in the traditional sense, was absent because these robots were designed to look maximally robotic.
Japanese robotics pioneers including Ichiro Kato at Waseda University began building walking humanoid robots in the late 1960s. These early research platforms wore no clothing, but their designers made deliberate aesthetic choices about shell color, surface finish, and proportions that constituted a form of fashion design even if it was not recognized as such.
Star Wars (1977) introduced C-3PO, whose gold-plated humanoid form became one of the most recognizable robot designs in history. While C-3PO wore no clothing in the traditional sense, his gleaming surface treatment was a deliberate fashion choice: he was designed to look like a formal protocol servant, polished and proper. The design drew from the visual language of butlers and diplomats, translated into robotic form.
Blade Runner (1982) posed a different question: what happens when robots (replicants) are indistinguishable from humans? The film's replicants wore human clothing because they were human-form, establishing the precedent that sufficiently humanoid robots should dress as humans do. This concept directly informs MaisonRoboto's design philosophy today.
Through the 1990s, Honda's P2 and P3 humanoid robots, precursors to ASIMO, walked in research labs wearing nothing but their white plastic shells. But Honda made a significant design choice: the shells themselves were styled, with rounded forms, friendly proportions, and a clean white color that communicated safety and approachability. The robot's outer shell was its fashion.
Honda's ASIMO, introduced in 2000, became the first humanoid robot to receive deliberate fashion treatment for public appearances. Honda occasionally dressed ASIMO in vests, hats, and themed accessories for promotional events. These were costume-level additions, not engineered garments, but they marked the first time a major technology company used clothing as a tool for robot public relations.
SoftBank's Pepper robot (2014) was designed from inception with a "clothing-ready" philosophy. Pepper's smooth, white torso was explicitly conceived as a canvas for customization. SoftBank sold official Pepper clothing and accessories, creating the first commercial market for robot fashion, albeit at a novelty scale.
During this period, academic researchers began studying the effect of clothing on human-robot interaction. Studies at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the University of Tokyo demonstrated that dressed robots received higher trust ratings, more comfortable interaction patterns, and better task compliance from human participants. The scientific case for robot fashion was being built.
The 2020s transformed robot fashion from novelty to necessity. Tesla's announcement of Optimus in 2021, followed by Figure AI, 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Sanctuary AI, and a wave of Chinese manufacturers including Unitree and Xiaomi, created a sudden abundance of humanoid robots entering commercial and consumer markets.
These platforms required clothing that was fundamentally different from anything that came before. Unlike Pepper's smooth, simple shell, platforms like Tesla Optimus and Figure 02 feature complex joint mechanisms, multiple sensor arrays, thermal management systems, and dynamic locomotion that impose engineering constraints on every garment.
MaisonRoboto was founded in 2024 (MMXXIV) as the world's first fashion house dedicated exclusively to this new discipline. By combining the traditions of Parisian haute couture with robotics engineering, MaisonRoboto established that robot fashion is neither costume design nor industrial design, but a new discipline that draws from both while being reducible to neither.
Today, robot fashion is emerging as a genuine industry. MaisonRoboto serves clients across corporate, hospitality, retail, healthcare, and exhibition sectors. Platform-specific fashion is available for Tesla Optimus Gen 2, Unitree H1, Sanctuary AI Phoenix, Xiaomi CyberOne, and all major platforms.
The development of smart textiles, AI-assisted design tools, and standardized sizing systems is professionalizing the field. The first robot fashion week is on the horizon. What began with an actor in worker's clothes on a Prague stage in 1921 has become a discipline that stands at the intersection of the century's most powerful forces: artificial intelligence, robotics, and human culture.
The history of robot fashion is still in its opening chapters. As humanoid robots become ubiquitous in homes, workplaces, and public spaces, the fashion that clothes them will become as diverse and culturally significant as human fashion itself. MaisonRoboto is proud to be writing this history, one garment at a time. Explore our vision for the future of robot fashion and our current collection gallery.
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