Adding fashion to wearable electronics

[gallery] From Nokia's fashion-focused L'Amour Collection that turned phones into hand-held jewelry done way back in '05, I've enjoyed watching companies and designers use fashion to differentiate their products. If you wear it, shouldn't it be fashionable?

Companies are turning to fashionistas to add a new spin to their wearable electronics. And who's better to do this now than Lady Gaga? A bit of an anomaly, Lady Gaga is able to straddle music, art, fashion, AND product design. Her latest foray into product design includes "Heartbeats by Lady Gaga".

Heartbeats embody the trinity of my human-being, with one additional vow: that SOUND matters. Wear heartbeats, love each other, and celebrate the art and lifestyle of music.

...says Gaga. The self-inspired design, including every detail developed with Lady Gaga, is both a unique reflection of her style and fashion sense as well as her commitment to the sound quality of her music and the way it's heard.

Continue reading on Tech Radar. Images from Gadget Nano, yellowchunymonkey.

High-Tech Couture Made Without Any Stitches Or Cuts

[gallery]Royal College of Art textile student Jungeun Lee, has created a collection of gorgeous garments that are constructed without any stitches or cuts called Wrapped Garment. The garments use synthetic fiber and a heating process to create three-dimensional, sculptural designs that require no cutting, weaving, or sewing. "The influx of new production technologies in fashion has created some interesting designs -- from Issey Miyake’s rapid prototyping, Amy Winters’s light-reactive clothing, even jackets made from microbes. But Lee’s method is actually quite simple: Wrap the synthetic fibers (either lots of short ones or one long thread) around a mannequin using a normal two-dimensional pattern made out of cardboard, then apply heat. The process can be used to create products...including shoes" Continue reading on fastcodesign.com.

Images from fastcodesign.com.

Funding a computational dress project

Kickstarter, a crowdfunding service, has been opening up doors for designers and artists to help fund their projects. One of the latest projects includes Mary Huang's computational couture called Continuum, which has already attracted 70 backers. Continuum is a user-generated fashion collection that is the "application of interactive technologies for bespoke design. In short, an app lets you draw a dress, turns it into a 3D model, and exports a cutting pattern to make the real dress, sized to your measurements." The result gives it a gorgeous, geometric aesthetic.

Go to Kickstarter and help her fund her project!

Continue reading on Kickstarter. Image source.

Living Clothes collection from Alice Ziccheddu

[gallery] In collaboration with argentinian 3D environment designer Carolina Travi, Alice Ziccheddu designed a collection of these gorgeous 3D digital garments called Living Clothes. There are quite a few explorations popping up that use software to generate 2D garment patterns from 3D models. The resulting aesthetic is incredibly beautiful and celebrates geometric forms.

I love how she first models the clothes in 3D Studio Max, software that was not intended for fashion design. She then incorporates sensors and microprocessors to make them interactive, sensing and reacting to their environment. I would love to see more.

Continue reading on SoftCircuit. Images from SoftCircuit.

An incredible wearable technology resource list

Digital media designer-artist, theorist and curator Valérie Lamontagne has an incredible wearable technology resources page that lists the who's who and who's upcoming in the wearable technology and eTextile field. She has even grouped designers and organizations into very interesting categories such as "Context as Prerequisite", "The Garment as Amplifier of Fantasy", and "Material Witness". For anyone interested in this field, this is definitely one for delicious. Thank you Valérie!

Visit her resource page.