Katy Perry Lights up the stage...again

[gallery] There's an abundance of light up stage-wear these days with another appearance on last night's American Idol show. Katy Perry enters the stage wearing a gorgeous and futuristic skin-tight suit covered in LEDs in her performance with Kanye West. Her costume was completely covered in lights and was quite mesmerising.

Illumination is definitely trending in the wearable space. And we're seeing some sneak into the mainstream market. I can't wait for more.

More at DailyMail. Images from DailyMail.

Chris Brown lights up the stage

[gallery] Illuminated clothing has been exploding on the stage recently from Tron's drool-worthy illuminated costumes,  CuteCircuits Illuminated performance couture, to Anouk Wipprecht's illuminated Black-Eye Peas Super Bowl couture, light-up clothing seems to be paving the way for wearable technology. The latest on-stage sighting is Chris Brown's performance on Dancing With The Stars that included light-embedded clothing on him and his supporting dancers. Watch the lights synchronize to the movements in this vid:

Even more light-up clothing

[gallery] However long it's been around in the wearable tech field, there seems to have been an explosion of light-up clothing in the news these days (read an earlier post about this topic). Now, I'm still not convinced that illuminating clothing is the best use of wearable technology, but it's tough to ignore all of the hype form celebreties performing and walking down the red carpet in illuminating clothing to DIY hackers creating Light Bright LED garments.

Here's some of the hype:

  • According to talk2myshirt.com, there's a trend in light-up clothing including the Light Bright LED vest created by Erik Johnson that includes a total of 1,536 three color (RGB) LEDs
  • Recently, Cute Circuit has created a variety of celebrity dresses including a design for Francesca Rosella and a light-up dress for singer Katy Perry for an event that she attended at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Costume Institute Gala
  • Rihanna and Moritz Waldemeyer lit up the stage with an LED dress for her ‘Last Girl On Earth tour‘
  • Fashion designer Zaldy created outfits for the likes of Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez designed for Michael Jackson’s ‘This is It tour’ his complete stage outfit including a illuminated Tuxedo for the ‘Billie Jean’ performance.

I'm still waiting for that killer light-up app that brings meaning to the functionality. Perhaps it will come from the $15 million consortium of leading companies and institutes in lighting and flexible electronics like Holst Centre/TNO, IMEC, Freudenberg, TU Berlin, Ohmatex under the lead of Philips with it’s inventive technology called ‘Lumalive‘. According to talk2myshirt "PLACE-it, the short form for ‘Platform for Large Area Conformable Electronics by InTegration‘ is a newly formed initiative under the umbrella of the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Program." I hope to see some real innovation come out of this research.

An actually cool light-up solution is a stage costume made and designed by Wei-Chieh Shih. According to fashioningtech, "the nylon suit is embedded with 200 laser diodes, transforming the performer into a mobile light show."

Now we're getting somewhere...

Images from talk2myshirt.com and fashioningtech.com.