Tag Archives: fashion

The Role of AI in the fashion industry. Virtual Try-On

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the fashion industry, playing a significant role in various aspects, from design and production to marketing and sales. AI’s capabilities are enabling fashion businesses to enhance efficiency, personalize customer experiences, and make data-driven decisions that drive growth and sustainability.

AI in Fashion Design

AI is revolutionizing fashion design by providing designers with tools to explore new creative possibilities, analyze trends, and generate innovative designs. AI-powered tools can analyze vast amounts of fashion data, including images, text, and historical trends, to identify patterns and suggest new design ideas. This can help designers stay ahead of trends and create designs that resonate with consumers.

AI in Fashion Production

AI is streamlining and optimizing fashion production processes, reducing waste and improving efficiency. AI-powered systems can analyze production data to identify bottlenecks, predict demand, and optimize resource allocation. This helps fashion businesses reduce production costs, minimize waste, and ensure timely delivery of products.

AI in Fashion Marketing

AI is transforming fashion marketing by enabling personalized customer experiences and targeted advertising campaigns. AI-powered tools can analyze customer data, including purchase history, browsing behavior, and social media interactions, to create personalized recommendations and marketing messages. This helps fashion businesses reach the right customers with the right products, enhancing customer engagement and conversion rates.

AI in Fashion Sustainability

AI is contributing to sustainability efforts in the fashion industry by optimizing resource utilization, reducing waste, and promoting circularity. AI-powered systems can analyze data on material usage, production processes, and consumer behavior to identify opportunities for reducing environmental impact. This helps fashion businesses minimize their ecological footprint and promote sustainable practices.

Examples of AI Applications in Fashion:

  • Personalized Style Recommendations: AI algorithms can analyze customer data to recommend clothing and accessories that match their individual style preferences.
  • Fashion Trend Forecasting: AI can analyze vast amounts of data, including social media trends, runway shows, and consumer behavior, to predict upcoming fashion trends.
  • Demand Forecasting: AI can analyze historical sales data, market trends, and economic indicators to forecast demand for specific products, helping fashion businesses optimize inventory levels.
  • Fraud Detection: AI can analyze payment data and transaction patterns to identify fraudulent transactions, protecting fashion businesses from financial losses.
  • Virtual Try-On: Virtual try-on (VTO) is a technology that allows users to virtually try on clothing, accessories, or makeup using their own images or 3D models. This technology is becoming increasingly popular in the fashion industry, as it offers a number of benefits for both consumers and businesses.

There are three ways to access virtual try-on as of now, and these are:

  • The first and most widely adopted way is that users can use the camera on their smart devices, like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc., to access try-on functionality. 
  • Another way of experiencing virtual try-on is through AR mirrors in physical stores. These smart mirrors capture customers’ appearance and overlay it with digital wearable products like clothing, make-up, pieces of jewelry, home decor, home appliances, furniture, etc. 
  • The third way is by creating 3D digital avatars through body scanning technology. One popular example is Apple’s iPhone. The iPhone series 12 and above have inbuilt LiDAR functionality that measures the dimensions of real-life objects. Users can use it to create accurate 3D avatars and try on products. The end result gives the exact look of the product as that of the user wearing it in the real world. 

Benefits of VTO for Consumers

  • Convenience: Try on products from the comfort of your home.
  • Personalization: Get personalized recommendations based on your style preferences.
  • Reduced uncertainty: See how products will look on you before you buy them.
  • Improved shopping experience: Make online shopping more fun and engaging.

Benefits of VTO for Businesses

  • Increased sales: Reduce returns and encourage consumers to buy more products.
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction: Provide a more convenient and personalized experience.
  • Reduced costs: Reduce the need for physical try-on spaces and streamline returns.
  • Valuable data: Gain insights into consumer preferences to improve product design and marketing.

The Future of VTO

  • AR VTO: See products in real-time using your own camera.
  • AI-powered VTO: Create personalized experiences and understand consumer preferences.
  • VTO for all body types: Cater to a wider range of body types.

VTO is revolutionizing the way we shop for fashion. It is a technology that has the potential to transform the industry.

There you can find some virtual try-on examples: https://www.netguru.com/blog/virtual-try-on-examples

Sources:

  • https://www.queppelin.com/virtual-try-on-a-detailed-guide/
  • https://www.theindustry.fashion/virtual-try-on-can-future-proof-retail/

AI generetor used: bard.google

Key prompts:

  • Please, tell me about the Role of AI in the fashion industry;
  • Please, tell me about virtual try-on

Tagged

loops

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last time I showed you some really cool and practical device that helps in improving your skiing, so I would stay in this convention but with much simpler “device” if u can name it that. But first some data:

-5 in 10 young people listen to their music or other audio too loudly

-4 in 10 young people are around dangerously loud noises during events like concerts and sports games

I can not recall a moment when I saw someone studying without headphones. We are so attached to our headphones but not only because of music, often is just cause we want to cut ourselves from outer world, even listening to silence. 

Cities are so biased and loud that sometimes it is hard to focus on your thoughts and basically it overwhelms us. Too loud noises can be really dangerous. In the US one in eight people has hearing loss in both ears so nearly 13% of their society is going deaf. Sometimes music isn’t the best tool to focus because it is extremely hard to find one without lyrics or sounds that disturb you even more. In my case only few jazz artists will be helpful. So why we are paying hundreds for device we don’t even use?

Interesting solution was introduced by Belgian company named Loops. The founders suffered for chronic ringing in their ears. Their vision was to release soundproof plugs to concerts, learning or for people with noisy lifestyle. What is interesting its not only an earplug but it is a kind of jewellery due to its aesthetic and unusual design. 

I think earplugs can be necessary in sooner future, because cities are getting bigger and big festivals gaining popularity among young people. Headphones are vicious circle as they are damaging your ear fibres and cause loss of hearing, so you start to volume up your music with cause it even faster. 

Let me know in the comments what are yours views about focus and loud noises. Maybe you noticed some changes in yours hearing lately?

https://images.app.goo.gl/PLkCH2A4hmxbXTr68

sources:

https://www.loopearplugs.com

https://be.linkedin.com/company/loopearplugs?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/listen-infographic

Tagged ,

The New Fashion?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Trends in fashion are constantly subjected to dynamic changes. Due to the different creative minds of fashion designers, there are dynamic fashion styles and designs, which are displayed in fashion shows today. The modern Fashion Show has highly been influenced by technology, as fashion designers tend to make use of technological pieces of equipment to create their designs. The most recent example of this is Bella Hadid’s look during the Coperni fashion show at Paris Fashion Week 2022.

The model had her whole dress sprayed onto her body through the use of 3D technology, developed by Manel Torres. The model posed as men with paint canisters sprayed fabric paint onto her for about 15 minutes, creating a gorgeous white slip dress that perfectly clung to her body. The spray-on fabric is applied using the likes of aerosol tech, industrial sprayers, and 3D printing. The technology can be used in fashion to not only create dresses like done on Hadid, but also to repair any damaged items.

COMBO-FASHION-FRANCE-WOMEN-COPERNI
JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP via Getty Images


The question now is will there be more fashion shows in which technology creates designs instead of clothes being actually sewed? There is no doubt that AI and machine learning-driven innovation have become critical success factors for fashion design organisations in the twenty-first century. Technology may be supreme in fashion shows today, however fashion generally is dominated by sewed clothes. In my opinion, fashion is an aspect that can never be replaced by technology. I think technology is displayed in fashion just to show the capability of AI generally and not for people to actually start wearing the designs projected. I doubt robots can replace tailors. Therefore upon the advancement of technology in fashion industry, the demand for tailors and designers will never diminish. However, I’m sure there will be more fashion shows involving technology, just like the fashion show back in 1999, where robots sprayed paint on a models dress.

This image may contain Dance Pose Leisure Activities Human Person Crowd Interior Design Indoors Clothing and Apparel
Shalom Harlow sprayed with paint by robots during the finale of the Alexander McQueen Spring 1999 RTW show. (Photo by Guy Marineau/Cond�� Nast via Getty Images)Conde Nast via Getty Images



We can see that technology in fashion started a long time ago, but still hasn’t fully taken over the fashion industry. However, with AI taking over almost every aspect of our lives, will design created by technology be the new fashion of today or in the near future? Will people switch to wearing such clothes?

References:

https://www.today.com/style/celeb-style/bella-hadid-spray-painted-dress-rcna50325

https://people.com/style/bella-hadid-gets-white-dress-spray-painted/

https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/how-bella-hadids-spray-on-dress-was-made.html

https://www.allure.com/story/alexander-mcqueen-shalom-harlow-runway-show

Tagged

Gucci stores to accept cryptocurrencies in US

Reading Time: < 1 minute
A woman walks in front of the Gucci store on Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower.

Italian luxury brand Gucci will start accepting payments in cryptocurrencies in some of its stores in America.

Customers will be able to pay using a number of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. The service will be rolled out later this month at some of its flagship outlets, including Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and New York’s Wooster Street.

Gucci, owned by France’s Kering, joins a growing number of companies that have started to accept virtual currencies. The firm said it will also take payments in Shiba Inu and Dogecoin – a so-called “meme” cryptocurrency that was originally created as a joke.

The brand said it plans to introduce the policy to all the North American stores it operates directly in the near future. Some of the world’s biggest brands now accept digital currencies, including technology giant Microsoft, US telecoms firm AT&T and coffee chain Starbucks.

From my point of view, it is a new step to the future and no-cash payments. All the companies should start to accept crypto.

References:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business

https://www.gucci.com

Tagged , ,

Metaverse fashion week- a potential future of fashion shows?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Metaverse has and will in the future influence many aspects of our lives. Focusing on fashion retail and fashion shows we are beginning to witness it.

We have recently become familiar with the term metaverse – now what does it mean?

The term metaverse refers to an interactive, simulated, and virtual space. Hypothetically speaking any open-world game in which users can interact with each other and are free from themselves physically is considered a metaverse. Examples include Sandbox, Second life, AXE infinity, Decentraland, and many more.

Coming back to the fashion aspect and especially talking about the Metaverse Fashion Week that premiered on 24th to 27th March this year showcased phenomenal remakes of iconic dresses and pieces of famous brands. Hosted by Decentraland, this four-day blockchain-based experience enlisted popular brands such as Hugo, Dolce & Gabbana, and Estée Lauder.

The event was hyped but the reactions were mixed but mostly positive, participants commented about glitches such as server overload issues with black screens of code and basic graphics and even compared them to previous digital fashion shows such as Gucci Roblox Garden in 2021. Specialists in the field of digital fashion such as Kerry Murphy who created the first NFT dress ever sold said that “The future looks like the past,” and while the user experience is “from the ’90s”, development is speeding up and will be better next year. Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro, the head of MVFW also commented that as browsers become more powerful the quality will improve and meet the expectations of the fashion community.  

Max Vedel, co-founder and creative director at Swipe Back, a metaverse creative agency that has worked with Gucci, Nike, and Swarovski commented that MVFW is a start in digital fashion and has a lot of places for improvement. He also commented that “You don’t just want to recreate real life in the metaverse; you want to be pushing boundaries and going crazy with your designs, show spectacles, and the experience,”. An example of this includes cats walking instead of models on Dolce & Gabbana catwalk.

Scenes from the Decentraland’s MVfW (Photo Credit: WWD)

For me, the cherry on the top of this event was the in-avatar performance by Grimes. She was dressed in a ‘mystique’ inspired dress by AUROBOROS which is a fashion house with futuristic otherworldly designed dresses.

Grimes’s performance at MVFW

References:

Tagged , ,

Instagram. From the picture-sharing platform to the powerful marketplace.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

It is hard to find a person who has never used or at least heard of Instagram. This social media is growing like wheat and does not give competitors any chance. Instagram is known as a platform where people can upload pictures or videos to share them with the subscribers. Well, to be precise, it used to be like that. Now, Instagram is becoming a social monster that has every feature you can think of. Imagine yourself scrolling your Insta feed and there is an amazing pair of jeans. You dream of getting them. Guess what, now you can do it in one click! 

Instagram marketologists never forget to follow all the trends and see what users actually want. This platform is an outstanding example of market research and customer-orientation. This way instagram is confidently becoming a huge market place.

Even though Instagram does not call itself “a market place”, a lot of users are happily developing their business there. Initially, its users simply shared their photos, but with the growth of the Instagram audience, entrepreneurs began to actively use it to present and promote their products. According to statistics, 48% of small businesses have Instagram accounts, and this number is constantly growing.

Instagram is primarily a visual presentation using photos, so it is best to sell products that can be “presented by the face”: clothing, gadgets, handmade products, children’s products, products for healthy lifestyle and weight loss, cosmetics and the like. However, many people successfully use this network to promote an intangible product – services, consultations, training, marathons and other things. The key disadvantage of Instagram is the inability to accept payments using built-in tools (due to the lack of such tools). But knowing the rapid tendency of developing, no doubts, these tools are going to enter the market soon. 

Two years ago, shopping tags appeared on Instagram. One click on the image allowed users to find out the cost of the product, information about it and instantly go to the site to buy it.

Shopping Tags are special price tags that are displayed on the photo when the user touches the image. On the preview of posts, you will immediately see an image of a white basket – this is how all publications with similar labels are marked.

The new functionality of Instagram opens up previously inaccessible business opportunities: now, in order to buy a favorite thing from a picture, just click on its photo. The click will redirect you to the product description page, and then to the online store to make a purchase.

Tags are available not only in the usual posts, but also in stories. In addition to the key selling function, they can help you get to know your customer even better and get statistics on traffic to your online store.

Tagged , ,

How to advertise your business differently

Reading Time: 4 minutesWe all are creative. Why? Just because without creativity it is almost impossible to establish  a business. In the world of the cut-throat competition thinking outside of the box is essential.

Lots of you have hobbies or even already jobs. Or in planning to launch its own brand or to commercialize finally what you are doing. But did you think how to advertise your business properly? And it is not about Facebook Ads Manager and billboards.

Kavyar – it is the platform with lots of magazines that provide the opportunities to advertise your business. Here I need to mention that this platform is relevant only for those who have its own magazines, brands, online businesses where is possible to put an advertisement, or you are a photographer, makeup artist, stylist, model, the CEO of model agency, the CEO of production agency or you are a producer of campaigns. It is all about creative people or owners of fashion and advertising businesses.

What does «Kavyar» provide?

  1. A huge range of magazines to be published in. Let’s consider, that I’m an owner of the newly born fashion clothing brand. Then I invite a producer and discuss with him or her an upcoming campaign. Then producer gathers the whole team of photographer, makeup artist etc. Then we conduct a successful campaign. Then, how to advertise? As the owner of the newly born brand, definitely I don’t have a huge team with marketing specialist, for example. But I know about this platform. Here we go: just to choose the magazine that is appropriate for your campaign (style). But the most tricky thing here is that not all submissions can be accepted. There you may see paid and free options. Even if you pay for the advertisement in the printed or digital magazine, there is no guarantee that your submission will be accepted. If not, you will get the full refund. After paid option you will get the feedback as soon as possible, after free submission you should wait some days or weeks to get the answer if your submission is accepted.
  2. Motivation. To be published in magazine can be beneficial even for the manager or for the CEO. However, to achieve this goal you have to have really qualitative content. If your campaign is done with professional tram, editors of the magazines will definitely accept you.
  3. Feedback. The only one source of improvement. Here you can find your favorite magazine and ask for the feedback on your portfolio or campaign. This option is always must be paid, however, the price of it usually less than 20$. Little price, but huge development. Just submit, and editors will assess your work carefully and strictly.
  4. Portfolio. When customer sees that your brand is published in magazines or it is just your service, he or she will definitely identify you as a stylish brand or as an expertise.
  5. Recognition.
  6. Possibility of being caught by more successful brands that can offer you a collaboration.
  7. Low prices for the huge improvement. Here everything depends on the brand name of the magazine, that’s why prices are different. You can pay nothing and be accepted or you can pay 60-350$ for the guaranteed submission. To come back to the 1 point, if magazine doesn’t like your campaign, it will not be accepted even if you pay, however if they like it, you will be calmer by faster response. It is also business for them. At the very beginning we don’t have finances for ads in «Vogue», but we need to create a BRAND, and this platform is the best solution.
  8. Strict deadline. You can improve time management skills.
  9. Advertisement. Lots of people who buy these magazines or just watch them online will see your brand name.

Usually you have to wait till the approval from the magazines for weeks or even months at best. At worst they just don’t answer you. And you never know when is a deadline or what is the topic of an upcoming issue. With «Kavyar» it works differently.

From the point of view of the business, owners of the Kavyar gave an opportunity to the magazines to earn money. So they established connections with their editors and offered such a possibility to be at this platform, but to take the commission. Kavyar gathers all the data as well as magazines: pictures, interviews, gmails, team credits, instagrams and payment credits as well. Magazines earn, platform earns and customers get what they want afterwards : recognition, good portfolio, consequently, they attract new customers.

Thats the aim of the platform.

Try to find more creative approach from the marketing perspective, it is highly appreciated in the world nowadays. 

Sources:

  1. https://kavyar.com/get-published
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iBrw7cKvhc
  3. https://retouchingacademy.com/kavyar-takes-the-fuss-out-of-magazine-submissions/
  4. https://nextcorps.org/project/kavyar/
    Here you can see how platform works in practice:
Tagged , , ,

The biggest problem of the ecommerce fashion industry

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Year by year we can observe a huge increases in fashion sales. Online sales are slowly becoming the most important part of fashion companies’ revenues. But the Internet creates kind of a wall, which is slowing the whole process and contains us from successful shopping.

In the recent years, fashion and apparel has become the fastest growing e-commerce category and the second largest after consumer electronics, growing form $375.6 billion in 2012 to $481 billion last year. Analysts predicts that the revenue will reach over $700 billion by 2022.

Buying clothes online means that we are not able to try them on and make sure the size fits us. This is why fashion companies have to struggle with a huge percentage of returned products (especially in the winter holiday season), which is something between 30-50% of the whole sales, which causes tremendously high costs connected not only with a return shipping, but also other processes needed to get the product back to the stock. Returns are growing even faster than the revenues, increasing 94.8% over the most recently measured five-year period. Moreover, over 4B pounds of returned apparel end up in landfills annually.

“What we hope to do with technology is make that growth rate slower.” Said Roger Graell, director of e-commerce at Spain’s Mango, which expects to make at least one-fifth of sales online by 2020.

Since 2012 there was plenty of startups which were trying to solve the problem with size fitting. Millions of dollars were invested in projects which were making kind of virtual fitting rooms (Avametric, Fitiquette), 3D scanners (Body Labs, Nettelo) and AI based algorithms (Virtusize, Pixibo). Most of them do not survive these days.

However, in 2016 three Ukrainian engineers created a technology, which allows people to scan their bodies using a smartphone’s camera. Their startup (called 3DLook) is implementing its technology to fashion retailers’ online stores. Thanks to that customers are able to measure themselves by taking 2 photos (from the front and from the side) and thanks to that can find out what is the perfect size for them. Technology is simply comparing customer’s measurement with producer’s size table.

3DLook claims to use advanced machine learning, AI and image processing to achieve their results. Recently, they got funding of $1 million for further development. Their technology can be a huge step forward successful apparel online shopping and, according to my research, fashion retailers hope it to be so.

And what is your opinion on this case? How many times did you buy a wrong size of some new clothes? Do you think that such technology is going to solve this problem? Let me know down below!

 

Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-onlineapparel-returns-focus/online-clothing-retailers-hunt-for-better-fit-to-cut-costly-returns-idUSKCN1OK1E2

https://www.ted.com/talks/aparna_mehta_where_do_your_online_returns_go?language=en#t-98979

https://www.retaildive.com/news/forrester-online-fashion-spending-outpaces-overall-digital-sales/522227/

https://independentretailer.com/2018/12/27/ecommerces-serial-return-problem/

https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/fashion-tech/can-technology-solve-fit-problem-fashion-e-commerce

https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/ecommerce-fashion-industry

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/30/body-scanning-app-3dlook-raises-1-million-to-measure-your-corpus/

https://3dlook.me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tagged , , , , , ,

See now, buy now – is this popular trend going to last?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

See now, buy now is a model that became very popular during last years and was introduced by many well-known fashion brands. This was supposed to be a way to decrease the amount of time between new collections were shown on the runway and than hit stores. This was invented due to the fact that people no longer want to wait six months to buy something that they saw on the runway. They are getting bored and forget that half year earlier they saw something that they liked. They want to have it now as they see it. Considering that you can have basically anything you want ordered and delivered the next day it doesn’t make much sense to wait for new collections six months, does it?

Brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren or Burberry, world-class designers create digital runways. Their fashion shows are streamed and thousands of people around the world can watch it at the same time as people sitting in front rows at the show, wherever they actually are. At the same time as they see the presented products they can order them online, sometimes through special applications or just through the regular websites. It’s an instant shopping and consumers seems to love it. After the show, new products are often sold out already, but it is rarely said out loud how many items where even available for sale.

Tommy Hilfiger makes the experience even better because since he started producing capsule collections with worldwide known and very popular model Gigi Hadid, the fashion show includes not only a catwalk, but for example a bunch of other additional attractions such as a whole amusement park build especially for the night of the show. Customers that are not even there can see everything starting from backstage where Gigi is designing the collection because it is all shown on the brand’s Instagram account, continuing to backstage with models right before the show starts, all looks on the runway and then the special attractions prepared for guests. You can feel like you are there.

It looks like fashion is going forward, adjusting to the new times but not everyone agrees. Tom Ford who actually also introduced this model said that starting with the season spring/summer 2018 he is going back to the old calendar because the industry’s system is not ready for the changes. He admitted that certainly this is the way for fashion world to change but for now they are not ready and he will proceed the old way.

According to how everything is changing nowadays and how fast we can get things that we want, in my opinion this is a right direction for fashion industry. I myself don’t like to wait long time for something that I like right now and I know people younger than me are even more impatient. This may be a good solution for cheaper brands, because they target younger people and this way they could show how consumer oriented they are.

What do you guys think about this model? Is it a future or rather an experiment?

Here you can see what people related to fashion industry think about it:

Resources:
http://avanti24.pl/Magazyn/1,150433,21430697,see-now-buy-now-o-co-chodzi-i-jak-z-tego-korzystac.html
https://i-d.vice.com/pl/article/mbvvbx/tom-ford-konczy-z-see-now-buy-now
https://i-d.vice.com/en_au/article/vbe5kd/the-shoppable-runway
https://www.thecut.com/2017/03/see-now-buy-now-fashion-effectiveness.html

Tagged , ,

Interactive fashion: are people ready to adopt it?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Have you ever thought that your clothes would assimilate with your body?

Just imagine, your all-natural reactions, behavior and processes are now all captivated by the shoes that you are wearing every day, some T-shirt, dress. Can you come with the idea that your favorite sweater might change a color every time you catch a flu or that you would be able to see the ignorance or anger of the person not through his facial mimics, but due to the movement of the fabrics in his or her shirt?

In the near future, it can be used not only as the protection from the outside of your body factors, but as a real part of you that compliments you, your physical processes and would be an integral part of the communication with the surrounding world.

Nowadays, such assumption is already not a fantasy, but a real fact. There are already created numerous examples of the clothes that seem to not only provide comfort, but to visualize and assist the hidden physical and mental processes of the human body.

The well-known fact is that, people have always been demonstrating their individuality through the clothes they are wearing, in order to create a specific social position in the conversation with others. In fact, the innovations in technology have provided us with the opportunity to express ourselves in a broader way.

The use of technology in fashion is now no more a tool to produce the clothes, but a new way to execute the human’s inside vision.

The newly invented fabrics and materials can correspond and show up the human’s emotions and condition. In result, a person wearing such clothes will be already unique due to the uniqueness of his or her own emotions and feelings, because the inner world of each human is already exclusive.

Therefore, as well, the high-tech clothes would be able to open a real conversation with a human body itself and due to physical factors and sensory processing the clothes would be able to interact with the body and, consequently, transform itself to satisfy the wearer.

Spider Dress

The Dutch designer Anouk Whipprecht through the combination of fashion and robotics has created a new realm of personal space. Due to the ability of biosensors to catch any evidence of a dress wearer feeling threatened, the robotic spider legs, built-in dress, create a “spider attack” position.

Social Escape Dress

As well, as Anouk Whipprecht, the designers from Urban Armor have been working on the problem of the personal space within a big city. In fact, the Social Escape Dress is equipped with GSR sensors (Galvanic Skin Response) that indicate a strong feeling of stress. As a result, the dress would emit a cloud of fog from the collar, if the wearer feels stressed and uncomfortable in any surrounding.

(NO)WHERE (NOW)HERE

By experimenting with the smart fabrics, robotics, sensory processing and eye-tracking technology, the Montreal designer Ying Gao got a chance to create the garment, which is complimenting its “user”. It is a series of two dresses, which have the ability to change the form and light up, if someone is looking at the person wearing these dresses. According to The Culture Trip: “It is normally the wearer who notices your gaze, not the clothes themselves, but this innovative creation has everyone’s head turning”.

Swarovski gemstone headpiece

The creative group “The Unseen”, headed by Lauren Bowker, has always been mixing the fashion and science. The Lauren Bowker, as the press calls her, “The Alchemist” has come with the invention of the ink that changes the color of the item it is applied on. Among a large majority of her inventions, like the hair dye that changes color, the headpiece created for Swarovski is the one that is acting in accordance with human body condition. The headpiece is constructed by the gemstones, which have been specially grown and later covered by the specific ink, created by Lauren, to become real indicators of the shift of amount of energy of the human. In fact, when the gemstones “feel” the transition of the condition of the human, they change color.  As the Dezeen has stated: “Excitement, nerves, and fear all produce different colours; and quicker shifts in emotion create more dramatic patterns.”

Bubelle emotion sensing dress

About a decade ago, Philips have been experimenting with the combination of smart electronics and fashion and, in fact, there was created one of the first garments that react to the wearer’s emotions. The dress is covered with numerous LEDs that illuminate and change colors due to the emotional condition of the human. Such changes are caught by the bottom layer of the dress, in which there have been installed the skin sensors.

Caress of the Gaze

Behnaz Farahi has developed an interactive garment. The 3D printed collar seems to become an artificial skin that due to built-in camera is able to catch the gaze of the other person and react on it by the lifelike motions. The garment is equipped with the Shape Memory Alloy actuators, which work as a muscle system for this 3D printed “skin”. The idea is to create a conversation not only “person to person”, but “person to person to clothes”.

To conclude, the technological innovation and, in fact, technological symbiosis with fashion have given us the ability to create a new way of expressing ourselves and interacting with the outer world through demonstrating our real inner processes. There, the clothes become a medium between a wearer and the surrounding. Such processes are assisting a human to enter a different level of interaction with the others, where the garment might become an equal conversational partner for people and the world.

But is it the thing that a person wants? There, step up millions of ethical questions. Would we be able to uncover our thoughts, our mood, health status, etc.? Would we be able to sacrifice the privacy of our own bodies and show up the real “I”?

 

Sources:

racked.com

dezeen.com

dazeddigital.com

businessinsider.com

Tagged , , , ,