innovations in wearables
smart January 12—April 20, 2017 THE HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE
textiles
smart textiles innovations in wearables
January 12—April 20, 2017
Clothes that monitor your health or measure your movements. Technology that makes it possible to recycle and reuse textile fibres. Smart textiles that revolutionizes our lives. The textile industry is about to take a giant step from being a supplier of fabrics to become a positive force in the development of society. Textile innovations improve people’s everyday lives and benefit the industry, the health care sector and the environment.
The Unseen gemstone-encrusted headdress
Revolutionizing our Lives So, what exactly are smart textiles? Smart textiles are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value to the wearer. What makes smart fabrics revolutionary is that they have the ability to do many things that traditional fabrics cannot, including communicate, transform, conduct energy and even grow. Smart textiles can be broken into two different categories: Aesthetic and Performance Enhancing. Aesthetic examples include everything from fabrics that light up to fabrics that can change color. Some of these fabrics gather energy from the environment by harnessing vibrations, sound or heat, reacting to this input. Then there are performance enhancing smart textiles, which will have a huge impact on the athletic, extreme sports and military industries. There are fabrics that help regulate body temperature, reduce
“Leather grown in a lab; parkas made from
wind resistance and control muscle vibration – all of which
protein; and textiles printed from algae are
help improve athletic performance. Other fabrics have
a few examples of how designers are using
been developed for protective clothing to guard against
synthetic biology to craft a more sustainable future for fashion.�
extreme environmental hazards like radiation and the effects of space travel. The health and beauty industry is also taking advantage of these innovations, which range from drug-releasing medical textiles, to fabric with moisturizer, perfume, and anti-aging properties. Just think of all the possibilities!
Smart textiles and (wearable) technology go hand-in-hand, and that designers approach the design application differently than the tech companies do, which ends up being much more friendly to the end user. Successful wearable technology companies will start with the design first, then build the technology around it. There are quite a few notable designers and companies that have jumped on the smart textile bandwagon who are doing some pretty amazing and innovative things in this space. Grado Zero Espace is an Italian based company who is doing some amazing things with textile technology and product design. Ying Gao, a fashion designer based in Geneva is creating clothing that combines urban design, architecture and multimedia, and uses sensory technologies to make garments more interactive. CuteCircuit, a London based design duo is taking their smart textiles and technology to the runway, as they showed a collectionat New York Fashion Week where the models controlled what their dresses looked like on the runway through their mobile phones. Leather grown in a lab; parkas made from protein; and textiles printed from algae are a few examples of how designers are using synthetic biology to craft a more sustainable future for fashion. Just as nylon and other chemically, engineered synthetic fabrics shaped the fashion industry in the 1950s and 60s, the next material revolution is poised to combine biology and chemistry to offer something undisputedly new and different. There’s even a company called BioCouture who is focused on bringing living and bio-based materials to fashion, sportswear and luxury brands. In essence, they are literally growing clothes from microorganisms like cellulose, fungi and algae! Susan Lee, a fashion innovatior, started Biocouture as an academic project back in 2004.She was researching her book Fashioning The Future: tomorrow’s wardrobe and interviewed scientists and engineers to discover how science and technology might change how we think about, design and create fashion in the future.
Woman’s jacket made of bacterial-cellulose
Biocouture cellulose bodice
The most interesting person she spoke with was a biologist. He posited that rather than using a plant like cotton in a field to grow a fiber, you could use a microbe to synthesize cellulose and ultimately grow a garment in a vat of liquid. Another designer Lauren Bowker is focusing on textile designs which are based on chimistry. When Lauren Bowker was studying textiles in Manchester, she fell badly ill. When she got out of the hospital, she realized that she wants to create something with more meaning. That’s when she started studying chemistry. That doesn’t mean that Bowker
“In essence, they are literally grow-
abandoned fashion altogether. Quite the contrary: while
ing clothes from microorganisms
still at university she designed a jacket dyed with a special
like cellulose, fungi and algae! “
ink that changed colour, from yellow to black, according
to pollution levels. After some years spent in consultancy, Bowker finally decided to create The Unseen, a fashion house whose aim is “fusing scientific study and creativity”. “It just tries to visualise unseen things in the environment, with humans, everywhere,” Bowker said. She still uses her chemistry skills to think up clothes and art objects that transform depending on the environment. One of them, for example, is a fabric whose colours change according to the surrounding pressure. The Unseen also wants to bring it up a notch, designing items that use chemistry and digital elements to react to their wearers’s physical and psychological status. A skullcap encrusted with over 4,000 “chameleonic gemstones” can show different
colour patterns according to the temperature of the wearer’s head. Another project The Unseen is working on would use an ink tracking brain electric activity. “It will change colour according to your emotions,” Bowker said. “If you’re sad, it will show blues and red , if you’re chilled it will be white.” originally thought for Formula One — to track aerodynamics by measuring the friction across the surface of cars in real time,” Bowker explained. Another interesting project is Aerochromics. It is a speculative fashion project crafted by Nikolas Bentel that imagines a future dystopia marred by pollution. The environmentally reactive garments become a tool to bring awareness to environmental pollution — making the invisible toxins that we breathe visible. The garments react to three pollutants: carbon monoxide, particle pollution and radioactivity. The carbon monoxide detecting sweaters change color when the pollutant is detected and return to its normal state when the toxin is no longer in the environment. The garments work in a similar fashion to carbon monoxide spot detectors. Unlike the carbon monoxide sweaters, the particle pollution detecting garments use electronics to sense pollution and, in response, heat areas of the garment printed with thermochromic dyes.The last wearable is a reactive radioactivity shirt uses another smart dye that changes color in response to gamma or electron beam radiation. The clever part of the design is that the shirt loses its capability to switch back to its normal state once you have been overexposed to too much radiation.Unlike other similar projects ( e.g. CO2 dress by Diffus or the Aegis Parka by Nieuwe Heren) Aerochromics garments will be available for sale at a future date.
“The carbon monoxide detecting sweaters change color when the pollutant is detected and return to its normal state when the toxin is no longer in the environment”.
Innovations
in wearables
Aerochromics It is a highly innovative, unisex brand which brags a fabric that begins to change from black to white at 60 AQI (Air Quality Index). The line of reactive clothing transforms its pattern when increased levels of harmful particles are detected in the air. Giving you added awareness of your surroundings, the tees are made from 100% soft cotton and are created using Aerochromic dye.
(No)where (Now)here Fashion designer Ying Gao brought in robotics designer Simon Laroche to help create (No)where (Now)here, two dresses that activate when someone looks at them. The gaze-activated dresses incorporate eye-tracking technology. When the dress detects a person’s gaze, it moves and lights up in the dark. The fabric moves like gentle waves, making them look alive, like some strange ocean denizens. The interactive dresses’ movements come from tiny motors. The lighting effect is generated by photoluminescent thread.
The Unseen The Unseen studio, led by artist Lauren Bowker, developed a wind-reactive ink that changes colour according to different fluctuations in the air and the body. The biological and chemical technology is infused into the layers of the tiered leather jacket, morphing it’s RGB values in response to pressure change. The nano compounds, inks and dyes are capable of sensing up-to seven stimuli in the environment such as heat, UV, pollution, moisture, chemicals, friction and sound. Each of these stimuli have a different colour changing effect on a given surface.
MuSkin MuSkin is a product which was developed by Grado Zero Espace. It is a 100 % vegetable eco-alternative to animal leather. It comes from the Phellinus ellipsoideus, a kind of big parasitic fungus that grows in the wild and attacks the trees in the subtropical forests. Muskin is a skin extracted from the mushroom hat and is processed in a manner totally similar to that animal, with a tanning, however, entirely natural.
BioCouture The BioCouture atelier has explored the use of living cultures of microorganisms (yeast and bacteria) to grow biomaterials like cellulose into sustainable, compostable clothing. BioCouture has recently evolved into a consultancy, building partnerships with emerging biomaterial producers to speculate and shape the future of grown consumer product.
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“Life Materials.” Life Materials, lifematerials.eu/en/shop/muskin/. “Materials.” Fashioning Tech RSS, fashioningtech.com/category/ materials/. “Transient Consumables - Diana Kovacheva.” Cargo - Gallery, cargocollective.com/dianakovacheva/Transient-Consumables. “Ruff Jacket. Image Courtesy of Suzanne Lee, BioCouture - UAL News.” UAL News, newsevents.arts.ac.uk/18893/radicalfashion/ l2010-4068/. @Yellowtrace. “The Unseen Air by Lauren Bowker Yellowtrace.” Yellowtrace, Apr. 2014, www.yellowtrace.com.au/ lauren-bowker-unseen-air/. Wired. “The Unseen Uses Chemistry to Create Reactive Fashion.” WIRED UK, 2016, www.wired.co.uk/article/lauren-bowker-the-unseen. Walker, Daniela. “Mind-Reader: Swarovski Gems Headgear Visualises Brain Activity.” Mind-Reader: Swarovski Gems Headgear Visualises Brain Activity | LS:N Global, www.lsnglobal.com/seed/article/16312/ mind-reader-swarovski-gems-headgear-visualises-brain-activity.