twenty1f: fashion for the 21st century

several pieces of everyday worn clothing that reveal or create patterns based on environmental conditions (e.g. sunlight, temperature, wind). for instance, a scarf changes the pattern on the textile surface (using thermochromatic ink) & even heats up when it detects that it is cold outside. a carrying bag lights up in dynamic grid-like patterns depending on local sounds, using electro-luminescent film & synthetic fabric.
these prototypes explore properties of person-to-person communication, proximity, & environmental sensitivity as expressive properties that can be worn.

A re:form research.

Via information aesthetics.

TAGS: bag, light, patterns

posted by : regine on 23 Sep 2006

Chicken feathers and rice straw could become commonplace in clothing in the future, scientists report.

These garments won’t resemble plumage or lawns. Rather, the feathers and fibers will get transformed into fabrics resembling wool, linen, or cotton. Researchers hope these inventions, made from the farming industry’s castoffs, could help reduce the use of petroleum-based synthetic fabrics such as Polyester.

“All those wastes don’t have to be wasted anymore,” researcher textile scientist Yiqi Yang at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln told LiveScience.

World consumption of natural and synthetic fibers amounts to 67 million tons annually, which are used not just in clothing, but in carpets, vehicles, construction materials and a host of other everyday applications. Satisfying the increasing global demand for fibers could prove challenging in the near future, the scientists explained, because of the limited availability of cultivable land, as well as the increasing price and decreasing availability of petroleum.

Just like cotton

The researchers turned their eyes to the millions of tons of rice straw and chicken feathers available cheaply, abundantly and renewably worldwide as farming byproducts. Unlike petroleum-based fibers, barnyard fabrics are biodegradable, the scientists added.

Rice fabrics are the most developed of the two fabric concepts so far. They are based off rice straw, the stems of the rice plant left over after rice grains are harvested. As much as roughly two billion pounds of rice fibers are available from rice straw in the United States, with about 20 billion worldwide.

In an environmentally friendly process that is now under patent review, Yang and research scientist Narendra Reddy purified out rice fibers by dissolving the rest of the components of rice straw using a combination of enzymes and alkali. Common textile machinery can then spin the fibers into fabrics.

The rice fabrics will look and feel similar to cotton or linen. The total production cost of the rice fiber is estimated at about 50 cents per pound, while cotton currently sells for about 60 cents a pound, Yang said. “We’re actively interested in attracting potential investors into the rice fabrics,” he added.

Chicken shirt

Chicken feathers are composed mostly of keratin, the same kind of protein found in wool. The researchers are specifically interested in their barbs and barbules, the stringy network that makes up the fluffy parts of the feather, which may have a similar feel on the skin as wool.

“More than 4 billion pounds of chicken feathers are produced worldwide per year, about 50 percent of the weight of which is made of the barbs,” Yang said.

The researchers investigated the physical properties of these filaments and found they possessed a sturdy honeycomb architecture containing tiny air pockets, which make them extremely lightweight and resilient. They could possibly serve as an improvement over wool due to their low cost, light weight and excellent heat and sound insulation, Yang said. However, he added they are not ready to make fibers from chicken feathers yet.

The scientists reported results concerning their rice fabrics today at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco and will present data on their chicken feather fabric on Sept. 13.

TAGS: chicken, fabric, feather, fibers, lab, organic, research, rice straw

posted by : regine on 13 Sep 2006

A lightweight bulletproof vest that protects against armour-piercing rounds is being developed by the US government’s Army Soldiers System Command.

Conventional vests use woven plastics to ensnarl normal, blunt bullets. Extra layers of hard ceramics, with air-filled gaps in-between, are needed to stop shells with hard cores and sharp, armour-piercing tips. But this makes the protection too heavy and bulky for a person to wear.

The new vest has three layers: a top ceramic section, a middle layer of aluminium, and bottom layer of woven nylon.

The aluminium is pre-scored to define interlocking plugs, like the pieces of a jigsaw. As an armour-piercing bullet hits the top layer, the ceramic strike the aluminium below like a hammer, and frees one of the plugs. When the bullet breaks through the ceramics a split second later it hits the free plug, which wraps round its sharp tip. The bullet then has a wide, soft tip that is easily trapped by the nylon below.

In testing, the vest could trap armour-piercing bullets fired at point blank range from a rifle at 850 metres per second.

Read the full ultimate body-armour patent application.

TAGS: army, bullets, protection, vest

posted by : regine on 11 Sep 2006

Futuristic style is not just a fabulist construct of the high-tech realm of science fiction. Radical technological advances in the world of fashion and the related garment industry have helped produce some of the most unusual and futuristic clothing. A selection of designs that highlight the mingling between technology and the fashion industry will be shown at an exhibition scheduled for 2007, organized by ATOPOS and curated by its artistic director Vassilis Zidianakis. The show will not narrow itself to technology-derived garments but will also include clothing ranging from haute couture to gadget-like clothing. Zidianakis has designed an exhibition that is not strictly “technocratic” but which addresses “future clothing” as an idea, a broad concept with diverse applications from pure design to clothing with “robotic” properties. This is where the exhibition differs from similar exhibitions held recently, such as the exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington DC or the Musee de la Mode Galliera in Paris.

Zidianakis will stretch the idea of futuristic clothing to the fullest. Cutting-edge creations by designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, Issey Miyake or Alexander McQueen will be seen next to non-designer items such as a C.P. company multipurpose garment which can be used as a vest, coat or armchair. The exhibition touches on one of the most high-tech aspects of contemporary fashion. It highlights how at the present moment fashion encounters disparate fields and adapts developments made in aerospace, genetics, pharmaceuticals, defense and sport for its own purposes. Those developments — which usually originate from companies such as Sony, Philips, France Telecom or athletic wear — provide fresh material and inspiration that are so necessary in fashion’s constant quest for the new. The technology and scientific fields also benefit by testing their experiments and turning them to profit-making commercial products.
The merging of fashion with technology manifests itself in various ways. It has produced the so-called hardware or software style, which is clothing that either functions like a gadget or incorporates within it a technological aspect, such as optical fibers. Technological know-how has also produced new textiles and has also transformed the actual dress-making techniques. Issey Miyake, for example, is one of the pioneers in experimenting with new techniques in patterning and laser-cutting. The range of fashions that technological developments have made available is impressive. Examples include UVA-protection clothing, chameleon-like fabric which changes color, stain-resistant textiles and garments with aromatherapy properties. In hardcore fashion, designers are working with scientists to produce eccentric artificial intelligence designs. Martin Margiela has collaborated on living-tissue material with biologists, Viktor & Rolf have produced clothes which function as moving projections of changing images, and Manel Torres has introduced spray-on clothing.

Futuristic clothing follows one of the latest trends in fashion, but the style has always had a place in fashion and art. Back in the 1920s the famous Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer produced his futuristic kinetic sculptures (which will also be included in the exhibition) and in the 1960s designers such as Andre Courreges and Paco Rabanne introduced space-age styles. The exhibition by ATOPOS will bring together all of these diverse manifestations of futuristic style. It will show that futuristic thinking has always found a way into people’s “second skin” — into the way they have dressed or dreamed of dressing in the quest for the supernatural. Paper dresses from the space-age 1960s In the late 1960s, a fad for dresses made out of paper spread across the United States. The fashion fad lasted two years and drew in women across the social stratum. Paper dresses are perhaps one of the most democratic and liberating moments in the course of fashion during the second half of the 20th century. Although disposable (they could only be worn a few times), they gave women the opportunity to experiment with different styles and dress in the latest designs. With a little over one dollar, women could be trendy during the days of psychedelic op-art designs, Andy Warhol’s “Campbell Soup” logo and hundreds of other pop-inspired designs. Much more than a fun phenomenon, paper designs actually derive from the experiments with new textiles and modes of production that spread through the fashion world during the 1960s. They were actually born out of NASA’s experiments with single-use clothing that could be worn by its astronauts. An integral part of the futuristic theme of the decade, paper dresses will, for that reason, be included in the exhibition on the garments of the future that ATOPOS is working on. Paper dresses were also an expression of the 1960s sexual revolution. They were flirty and young and because of their easily torn material were also daring. In the early 1970s, the emphasis on recycling and the time’s ecological concerns put an end to the fad of paper dresses. But women had already enjoyed the pleasure of being in fashion with dresses that cost almost nothing but were worn by celebrities and ordinary women alike. Some four decades later, paper dresses have become collectible items that, in certain cases, cost almost a thousand times more than their original price. Yet their disposable quality is of concern no longer. They were fun back then and are now a sign of a 1960s futuristic utopia. Original curating by ATOPOS Vassilis Zidianakis, a costume designer and curator with a background in the study of ethnology, anthropology and the history of civilization, is the artistic director of ATOPOS, a non-profit cultural organization that he co-founded (together with Stamos Fafalios, Marianna Kavalieratou, Giorgos Giorgakopoulos and Dimitris Papanikolaou) back in 2003 with the purpose of organizing cutting-edge projects (atopos is an Ancient Greek word that means the uncanny, alternative and eccentric) that merge contemporary arts, fashion and design. ATOPOS commissioned Marcus Tomlinson’s short film “Infusion,” a contemporary take on the fustanella that was shown at the successful “Ptychoseis” exhibition in 2004 (Zidianakis was curator of the exhibition). Other ATOPOS projects include the video “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” Tomlinson’s artistic interpretation of a rare post-Byzantine dress that is housed at the Mystras Museum and Jackie Nickerson’s video “Issey Miyake Fete: Constellation.” ATOPOS has also been involved in the costume design for the production of Yiannis Xenakis’s “Oresteia” (directed by Spyros Sakkas) and has worked with the dance theater group of Natassa Zouka. Although active for only the past few years, ATOPOS has already made an international splash. Zidianakis, whose past international exposure includes collaboration with the famous director Robert Wilson, was one of the main participants at the sixth International Shibori Symposium and he has been invited to be part of the committee at the upcoming Hyere 21st fashion festival in southern France. Another international side to ATOPOS is its advisory committee, which includes names such as Jun Kanai (the US representative of Isssey Miyake), Marie-Claude Beaude (director of the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg), independent fashion curator Lydia Kamitsis and C. Raman Schlemmer, head of the Oskar Schlemmer Archives. ATOPOS has also built a substantial collection of garments and contemporary fashion with a focus on radical creations by such radical designers as Yohji Yamamoto, Christophe Broich and Bernard Willhelm. ATOPOS actually owns the richest and most comprehensive collection of 1960s paper dresses internationally. A selection of those will be presented in an upcoming exhibition at the Benaki Museum. The exhibition will also travel to museums and fashion institutes abroad. A dynamic organization, ATOPOS has introduced new aspects of fashion to this country through original projects and well-researched projects.

TAGS: none

posted by : regine on 10 Sep 2006

A model presents a creation, with Sony Ericsson mobile phones attached to it, by Japanese designer Erina Kashihara during a ‘Light and Colour fashion show,’ part Japan Fashion Week, in Tokyo September 5, 2006. Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Inc. conducted the show in collaboration with Tokyo Collection to promote the company’s new ‘W43S’ handsets series. See image number 15 and number 20.

Via textually.

Yahoo.

TAGS: none

posted by : regine on 7 Sep 2006

Fashion Projects #2 is out. It covers fashion and art collectives, as well as collaborative projects between artists and fashion designers.