Fashion has been slow to tackle wearable technologies, but this is changing very fast and now extends beyond digital technologies to state-of-the-art fashion and science collaborations.
This Thursday, as part of the cultural program of the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014 at the Wheeler Center, a discussion will take place on the impact of games on wearable technologies and what our fashion future might look like.
To broaden the discussion, this article offers a snapshot of projects that combine science, technology, design, and fashion in a fundamental way to radically re-imagine what wearables of the future might be. These projects deal with biology and materials science and are looking for new ways to rethink fashion.
Origin of wearables
When people think about wearable technologies, they may be thinking of technical innovations like Google Glass or head-mounted displays for games.
Such concepts are not new. Embedding a camera in a pair of glasses was first suggested in the 1980s by inventor Steve Mann. What's new is that the engineering team got the concept and finally commercialized the product. From a fashion perspective, the problem is that technically-motivated wearables like these typically do not exploit the full aesthetic potential of culture and clothing.
For technically sophisticated wearables to have a coherent and exciting future, the disciplines involved in their creation must come together. One of the challenges facing designers and researchers is how fruitful collisions can be made between fashion designers, engineers and scientists: experts, who usually come from very different perspectives.
Their examples offer promising paths.
Simply Reforbes!
Wearable solar technologies
Pauline van Dongen is a Dutch fashion designer known for her work on wearable technologies. Her Wearable Solar project, a collaboration with Christiaan Holland of the HAN College and solar energy expert Gert Jan Jongerden, explores how solar cells can be placed close to the body so that the body uses solar energy and becomes the mobile source of electrical energy.
The first items of clothing designed for the project include a wool and leather coat with 48 rigid solar cells and a wool and leather dress with 72 flexible solar cells. In both garments, the solar cells can be made visible when the sun is shining or folded away and carried invisibly when not needed directly.
If they are carried in the sun for one hour, they can save enough energy to charge a typical smartphone by 50%. The garments are both functional and fashionable and show what can happen when a tech-savvy fashion designer is involved in a project to develop new forms of wearables right from the start.
At Wearable Solar, Van Dongen works with scientists and technologists specializing in the development of flexible solar modules, as well as business developers, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, to facilitate the commercialization of the product. Although the results of the project have not yet been put on the market, all elements are in place to ensure the timely realization of a sophisticated, aesthetically pleasing portable solar garment.
Ethical and ethereal
The benefits of such an approach are also evident in the work of artist and fashion designer Helen Storey and scientist Tony Ryan. Their first collaboration, The Wonderland Project, used fashion as a "Trojan Horse" to progress, a radical, two-year exploration of biodegradable materials. The project's motto was "Plastic is Precious" and led to two very different results: "Disappearing Dresses" and "Bottles that Become Flowers".
The "Vanishing Clothes" were made from dissolving textiles designed by Trish Belford at the University of Ulster Interface Research Center. At the exhibition, the clothes are hung on scaffolding and gradually lowered into huge goldfish bowls of water, where they dissolve and produce a pulsating underwater fireworks. The aim of the dresses is to raise the public's imagination and encourage them to question the environmental sustainability of the current fashion industry and the effects of used clothing.
In a slightly different approach to the term "plastic is precious," "bottles that turn into flowers" are exploring smart packaging. Once finished, these water bottles dissolve under hot water and form a gel in which seeds can be grown. The concept aims to identify issues related to plastic waste. As Storey and Ryan emphasize, such an approach could revolutionize the packaging industry.
When they first started working together, Storey had not imagined designing a series of dresses, but she and Ryan soon realized that a spectacular fashion result would increase their interest in their deeper, ethical riders. The Wonderland project has led to further research into the use of nanotechnologies in catalytic clothing to create clothes that can purify the air, and The Dress of Glass and Flame, a collaboration with the British Royal Society of Chemistry and the prestigious Venetian Glass Studio, Berengo Studio.
Bacteria and fungi
TED Senior Fellow, Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins, London, and head of the Living Materials Consultancy, Biocouture Ltd, builds clothing with bacteria. As she explains in the video below, she works closely with scientists Alexander Bismarck and Paul Fremont of Imperial College London to refine their techniques and make their clothing more wearable. Lee and her team also explore other nature-inspired products and work with various industries to study the evolution of living materials and develop custom prototypes.
In the spirit of open source innovation, Suzanne discusses her evolving research findings on her biocouture website and provides recipes on how to grow your own biocouture material.
Examples of scientific and fashion collaborations remain the exception, though we see an increasing interest in this area, also here in Australia. In 2003, Edith Cowan University masters student, Donna Franklin, began working for SymbioticA, studying the growth and staining of fabrics using fungi.
She developed Fiber Reactive, a white dress that was "colonized" by a living fungal growth in rich reds, oranges and greens. Donna has also worked with scientist Gary Cass to produce Guinness and wine apparel.
There are still many challenges to overcome before this new generation of wearables becomes available to the public.
Integrating digital technologies into our clothing is perhaps the most accessible starting point, but looking at the life sciences and materials sciences is probably the most inspiring path to radical innovation
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