Fashion technology as narrative

Fashion designer Angel Chang combines technology, data visualization, and narrative in a unique way that influences the aesthetics and function of her fashion collections. She's been experimenting with color-changing inks, 3-D images, iPod clothing, and light-up gear in her recent fashion lines to help tell stories about her garments.

"I think of all the ways my generation of women are different from previous generations: we're working more, traveling more, dependent on our cell phones, hooked on the Internet, and obsessively checking our e-mail. In short, we are more mobile and heavily depend on technology for all the things we do in our daily lives. My aim is to show that clothes can actually do something -- beyond just looking good; they ought to facilitate and improve the way we live." she says. 

She uses technology in many ways to create textiles for her garments. In her Spring 2008 collection, she uses a variety of mapping data that she visualizes and turns into textile patterns. For example, this dress uses maps of battlegrounds that she prints using 3D and embroidery:

Chang collaborates with technologists to integrate smart materials and technology into her garments. The below dress from her Fall 2007 collection shows integrated circuitry for an iPod.

Chang also uses smart materials as narrative. In the below dress, she uses thermochromatic inks that disappear when heat is applied to them to tell a story about the history of military camouflage. 

More info via AngelChang.com

Electroluminescent dress

Designers Amy Winters and Kseniya Zagorodnyuk of Couture Clubbing believe that the demand for innovation in entertainment and fashion is growing, therefore, they collaborate with technology companies to design garments that incorporate new and emerging textiles. As a result, they've created some beautiful garments with technology-infused accents such as this egg-shaped couture dress found in their Paradise Lost line. The dress is accented with electroluminescent wire and it can be purchased for a cool 1000 pounds. The aesthetic of the accents is beautiful. Who wouldn't want to wear this gorgeous couture to bring in the new year?

Liquid crystal textiles

Fashion designer Joshua Hupper of AlphaMicron is working with liquid crystal technology that he's applying to garments. The technology is similar to that found in many flat-panel HDTV displays. AlphaMicron originally applied the technology to sunglass lenses, which tint when exposed to sunlight or with a push of a button.

But Hupper wanted to go beyond just eyewear by asking: "How could we use [liquid crystal technology] to serve sort of an aesthetic that people hadn't really seen before?" (source). So he began experimenting with the technology by applying them to fabrics. The fringe on the above skirt gradually changes color. And in the dress below, the sequence gets darker when the sunlight shines on them.

 (image source via CNN)

I've seen a lot of experiments with color-changing textiles using thermochromatic inks that change color when heat is applied. However, integrating liquid crystal technology into fabrics could result in a beautiful aesthetic that offers new opportunities for reactive textiles.

Sources via CNN and Business.

Wearable forest

Ryoko Ueoka, Hiroki Kobayashi and Michitaka Hirose created this beautiful piece titled Wearable Forest from University of Tokyo and I can't get enough of it! This gorgeously delicate and illuminating dress interacts bio-acoustically with a remote forest. Lights are integrated into the fabric and their illuminations react to wildlife around the world through a wireless link connected to the internet. Real-time data and sound streams from the internet to the dress.

The beauty of this piece is that it expands beyond a single garment into one that is an ecosystem by enabling real-time environmental data from the web to interact with it. This provides a unique connection to nature and opens up the possibilities of "a completely new dimension of how clothing design can interact, react and merge with the environment," source via Talk2MyShirt.

See a video of the dress in action here.

Challenging the aesthetics of circuitry

Once again, Leah Buechley, a pioneer in soft circuits and the creator of the LilyPad developers kit, has been experimenting with painted electronics that ultimately challenge the aesthetics of circuitry. She's got a new Flickr set of her painted digital wallpaper installation where she's using multiple LilyPads and conductive paint for the circuitry. I can't wait to see what the final outcome will be.

Last month, we talked about Buechley's paper computing and circuits and Becky Stern's embroidered circuit titled “A Tribute to Leah Buechley“. Both challenge our notion of how circuits can look as well as behave. Read the posting here and see a video of Buechley's paper circuits in action.

Resource via Make Magazine.

Fashioning environmental noise

Designers Younghui Kim and Milena Iossifova Berry collaborated on HearWear, a collection of garments that visualize environmental noise. The garments detect the noise levels in the context in which you are standing, and translates the levels into light patterns. The louder it is around you, the brighter the garments become. The designers used integrated circuitry, a microprocessor, and a number of LEDs and electroluminescent wire to achieve the behavior. Here's a diagram of how it works:

What I love about this project is that, according to the designers, they "work not only towards a better environmental awareness for most people, but also towards the unnoticeable integration of technology in your day to day fashion and lifestyle." As a result, they seamlessly integrate the technology into the garments in a way that is gorgeous and that informs the fashion aesthetics of the garment. For example, one skirt uses electroluminescent wire along the seams to create a pattern on the front of the skirt. Another uses painted shapes down the front that host the electronics, which creates the aesthetic pattern.