Kozminski Techblog

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