twenty1f: fashion for the 21st century

July 29, 2002

aute couture was never this hot. Forget drip-dry shirts and wrinkle-free trousers, the apparel revolution has a lot more in store than you imagined. Smart clothing may not look very different from normal clothing, but an array of interwoven sensory strands provides information that assists the wearer.

For instance, the US-based International Fashion Machines (IFM), an MIT Media Lab start-up dedicated to bringing together the worlds of fashion, consumer electronics and emerging technology, is working on a technology that will let you change clothes electronically, thanks to thin wires and ink that changes colour with temperature.

Early experiments with hot-wired clothes weren’t too successful. One reason was that the thermochromatic ink tended to leave patches around warmer body parts, such as breasts, leading to some embarrassing highlights. Predictably, they soon flopped — the shirts, that is.

But IFM is optimistic that its ‘Electric Plaid’ will boldly go where no fabric’s gone before. If you fancy polka dots on your handbag or pinstripes on your shirt, the technology allows this — and you can always revert to the original. At the corporate level, it can be used to highlight your company logo and commercial office equipment such as softboards, cubicles and furniture. In fact, you’re likely to see Electric Plaid in offices long before you get around to wearing it.

It’s not without its drawbacks. The source of power is a major issue — you’ll need to lug batteries around. Also, hot-wired clothing does not take kindly to tumble washes and spin dryers. Levi Strauss discovered this the hard way two years ago, when it made an unsuccessful stab at selling a jacket with an embedded cell phone and MP3 player.

Other products IFM is working on include an electronic dress with fabric circuitry, a wearable musical instrument made from a Levi’s jacket, an embroidered keypad, a mini-MIDI synthesiser, speakers and batteries, and an embroidered electronic tablecloth that let guests at a party play a game of Jeopardy.

The technology doesn’t belong exclusively to the realm of the fashion-conscious. Certain smart garments are capable of giving information about the wearer’s health, location and movements. Integrated sensors monitor the wearer’s condition and position.

In case of an accident, an emergency signal is sent out manually or automatically. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology gives the current coordinates of the user’s position. That comes in handy if you lose your way in a particularly rough neighbourhood, or if your kid has the habit of wandering off by herself.

The Techno Bra, developed by design student Kursty Groves, features a built-in heart monitor, GPS locator and wireless phone. If the Techno Bra detects a rapid jump in heart rate, the GPS locator determines location and the wireless phone notifies police.

The bra can apparently tell if the rise in pulse is the result of exercise, or set off by fear and adrenaline in the event of a physical attack. False alarm? No worries — just press the oops button to kill inadvertent distress signals.

For golfers and tennis players eager to study their arm swing, Philips has come up with an intelligent tracksuit top fitted with conductive fabric strips. The top measures electrical resistance when the fabric is stretched and the data is transmitted to a computer to create a simulation of the user’s movement.

Military applications open up an entirely new world of possibilities. Clothing that changes colour according to the background is perfect for camouflage. Maybe we should call it chameleon clothing instead.

Bharattextile.com

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posted by : bev on 29 Jul 2002

By Annalia Barbieri
July 17 2002

Running alongside the everyday world of fashion - what trouser leg shape or heel height is in? - is another stream of fashion that is so ahead of itself that it belongs to a time that hasn’t even arrived, preparing us for a world we may never see. A place where clothes evolve for reasons beyond mere spectacle.

It is this other world that is the subject of a new book: The Supermodern Wardrobe, by Andrew Bolton.

Bolton was inspired to write the book after reading French anthropologist Marc Auge’s Non-Places, which looks at areas of transition - airports, roads, the underground railway - places where we experience excessive amounts of information, space, temperature changes and noise, yet have no emotional attachment to.

“The more I thought about it,” says Bolton, “the more I thought about designers who were responding to those places by designing clothes that provided shelter against the weather, noise, pollution and also protection against street crime and the gaze of the surveillance camera. What intrigued me was the idea of a ‘fifth season’, in which you control your environment.”

An anthropologist by training, Bolton works as associate curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This “fifth season” comes to us in the form of garments that range from the truly science fiction - jackets that control your temperature and calm you down if you’re stressed, to the rather more practical: concealed pockets to fox the pickpocket and clothes that reverse or unzip to offer more versatility. To warrant the label “supermodern”, however, they must go beyond mere function or the wow factor.

“Supermodernity is about an excess and protection from that,” explains Bolton. “Also, in a supermodern space you disengage from your environment.”

Pockets are one of the prerequisites of the supermodern. Zips or popper fasteners are another. If the garment can be transformed from, say, a coat into a chair, so much the better. But the absolute mark of supermodern is that the garment must buffer, in some way, the wearer from his or her urban, transient environment.

The Vexed Parka, by the British label Vexed Generation, is probably the most supermodern garment in the book. It fulfils all the criteria but it is a rather sad reflection of what we need protecting from. Adam Thorpe and Joe Hunter designed it in response to the military tactics of police during political demonstrations in London.

Made of ballistics nylon, a component of bulletproof vests, its design mimics police riot gear; it is knife-repellent, fire-resistant, padded around the kidney and spine regions and has between-the-legs fastening.

“Riot police always debilitate demonstrators by going for the groin,” explain Thorpe and Hunter, “our parka provides protection against this form of attack.”

Some are rather more conceptual than truly practical: a hooded coat that becomes a hammock, an inflatable polyurethane jacket that turns into an armchair. The idea is supermodern but the application is gimmicky. The idea of shelter is also one of the components of the supermodern.

At the forefront of more practical supermodern design are labels we associate with transience: luggage designers such as Mandarina Duck and Samsonite. The latter’s Blacklabel Travel Wear collection was launched in 1999, and designed by former Gucci and Prada menswear designer Neil Barrett. Blacklabel brought us the “anti-stress car coat” made from an “anti-stress” fibre that blocks out magnetic waves and has neck and back supports plus one of those rubber balls - sewn into a pocket in the sleeve - that are meant to calm you down if you squeeze them.

In the mid-1990s, Philips got together with Levi’s to work on “wearable electronics”. Philips-Levi’s have launched their industrial clothing division range (ICD+) that so far comprises four jackets that allow the wearer to control their immediate space.

Each contains a GSM phone, MP3 player and headphones, and all are linked by something called a personal area network. A remote control pad allows users to switch from the MP3 player to the phone without fumbling. The headphones sit neatly in the collar when not in use.

CP Company can provide you with a jacket that not only cuts out air pollution, with a mask attached to the hood, but also noise pollution. To help us cope with the changing temperatures, there are also waistcoats and jackets that provide personal air-conditioning systems. Philips-Levi’s, Vexed Generation and Samsonite all use a fabric called “outlast phase change” (OPC) material, already used in sports clothing. It helps regulate body temperature by absorbing excess body heat into its microthermal material and then redistributing it to any cold spots it detects on the body, say from under the arms to the kidney area.

Occasionally, the more decorative world of fashion and the supermodern cross-fertilise. Consider multi-pocketed combat pants, the reversible fleece waistcoat, the odious Gap hooded top - now the uniform of disaffected youth - to see how these once supermodern items have become part of many wardrobes.

Hoods are one of the more sinister applications of the supermodern - their application has become more menacing than protective.

But it’s good old pockets that are the single most integral feature of supermodern clothing. Nothing new in this - but most designers now nod at the “you can’t have too many pockets” ethos. Japanese designer Kosuke Tsumura designed a coat with 44 pockets.

The supermodern wardrobe’s roots are with designers such as Jean Patou and Chanel, who both emulated sportswear separates and sold them to a monied clientele. American designers such as Bonnie Cashin, Vera Maxwell and especially Claire McCardell really brought them to the masses in the 1930s, at a time when the world was becoming obsessed with motorised travel. These and later designs still do not look out of date. These separates adapted to help the woman of the time cope with her new urban environment.

In 1934, McCardell introduced a precursor to the capsule wardrobe: a five-piece system of interchangeable wool jersey separates, which was “sophisticated enough to go from office to opera”.

The following year Maxwell introduced the concept of the “weekend wardrobe” - five mix-and-match pieces in tweed.

Although designers such as Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges are associated with clothes that looked supermodern, they actually weren’t; they were inspired by space travel, not a need to deal with transient space.

Today’s designers such as Mandarina Duck and Patrick Cox give us pieces that reduce or layer to adapt to their environment. Duck goes for the layering effect, often using patented fabrics such as “fiberduck”, which is like parchment but breathable as well as wind and rain resistant.

Modern design imperatives show we have become a tribe that needs protecting from each other, so annoyed by the noise, the very presence of our fellow passengers that we need to be shielded. Being supermodern has become a supremely selfish act resulting in a “me me me” mentality.

The Independent

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posted by : bev on 17 Jul 2002