Ying Gao is a fashion designer and professor of design at UQAM from the Université du Québec presents her latest collection that includes 3 interactive, intelligent garments at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec between June 9th and August 28th 2011

The garments respond to sound, motion or light by changing their shape and style elements.

Ying Gao sees her designs as highly conceptual, obviously not as practical as we might wish but such design and technology explorations are one of the stepping stones for the ‘must have’ of tomorrows fashion.

As we have posted earlier under the headline of ‘Phneumatic Fashion‘, Ying Gao investigates the possibilities and opportunities shape shifting, transforming clothing could one day transform the fashion world.

Together with fashion designers like Hussein Chalayan, Di Mainstone and Kerry Jia Yi Lin, Ying Gao is among the pioneers of interactive fashion design, clothing that changes the shape in sync with our life or maybe one day in response to critical, health harming situations in our urban jungle.

Why not – we promoted already the surgical face mask to a fashion statement, why not the dress or jacket as well?

To give you a visual idea how beautiful integrated, soft interactivity works, check out the short video clip below featuring the ‘Walking City Dress 1′ by Ying Gao:

[via: Dexigner]

The world of fashion design always welcomes the irrational, the provocative side of creativity unlike technology which loves to be strict, definable and playing along the rules and laws.

Where does this leaves us when we talk about wearable, fashionable technology? Maybe something like the Speaker Vest with 8″ Sub-woofer created by Joe Andolina a Software engineer by day, artist by night – according to his own words.

His mind blowing, eardrum scattering speaker vest design features a set of two amplified motorcycle speakers just off the shoulders. A low-profile 8″ sub-woofer not only give off the deepest sound waves but doubles as back massage during the really low notes of your favorite song.

All that sound power needs some electrical power which is provided the a specially designed power belt containing 10 rechargeable cells.

Best of all – Joe is offering this one-off Speaker Vest via his Etsy store for US$ 900.- Not too bad for a one-of-a-kind Haute Couture garment.

You think this is over-the-top? Think again – how about people having their car trunk full of audio amplifier and sub-woofer – driving around with their eardrum scattering vehicles?

[via: Technabob]

Media artist and fashion designer Amy Konstanze Mercedes Rainbow Winters is presenting her second collection of color changing fashion for the Autumn/Winter 11 season.

Amy’s first Spring/Summer 11 collection has been inspired by the vibrant colors of nature like the rain-forest, light rain, cloud bursts and tropical thunderstorms. The water-reactive ink disappears revealing the color underneath the dress whilst the sun-reactive ink turns purple.

The A/W 11 collection pays homage to Yves Saint Laurent’s 1965 Piet Mondrian collection and 20th century artists Picasso and Kandinsky.

Taking the colorful element of these artists, Amy added the wearable technology magic of the 21st Century to transform static color compositions into fluid, interactive color animation, reacting to the surrounding environment like sunlight, UV club light or music.

The use of color-changing inks is a unique feature to Rainbow Winters fashion designs giving them a technological twist which is so much matching with today’s lifestyle of interactivity, spontaneity, reflecting the constant change in our life.

Color-changing inks that react on sun (UV) light, temperature and humidity are relatively ‘low tech’, a perfect solution for introducing more advanced and complex wearable technologies into the fashion world.

Interested in having one of these iconic items in your wardrobe for this season? You can find Rainbow Winters S/S 11 collection at ‘123 Bethnal Green Road’ boutique in London. The A/W 11 collection will also be available in Tokyo, Japan at ‘Le charme de Fifi et Fafa’ boutique and soon worldwide at Amy Winters online store.

Syuzi over at Faschioning Technology is very busy organizing the first major event in wearable technology of 2011, the FashionWare SXSW exhibition on March 18th and 19th in Austin, Texas.

The FashionWare show will bring on stage the most advanced and beautiful wearable tech garments of today. Here is a short list of some of the highly interesting designs awaiting the visitors to see: Klight, designed by Mareike Michel, Laser Suit from Wei-Chieh Shih, Petal Dress by Amy Winters, 3Elctromode with designs from Valerie Lamontage and Magalie Cn, Bats Have Feelings Too by Lynne Bruning and the Twinkle Pad by Diana Eng.

Check out the video below, made by Syuzi as teaser for the FashionWare show and admire all the creativity and aesthetic designs, see how innovative technology transforms fashion.

FashionWare SXSW from Syuzi Pakhchyan on Vimeo.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to visit the FashionWare Show but if you attend this event please drop me a line and tell me what I have missed by not being there.

For more details check out FashioningTech.

What better place one can imagine to show off fashion and technology then the annual technology center of the universe, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 bringing the next generation of wearable technology on the FashionWare runway.

This evening event will be hosted by high-tech fashion designer and author of Fashion Geek, Diana Eng sending models wearing the latest digital fashions and accessories down the runway.

“FashionWare will look at how fashion designers use technology to not only invent a new aesthetic but change the way we interact with our clothing,” said Eng who is designing a techno-fashion collection for this show.

FashionWare attendees can expect to see a variety of innovation such as programmable dresses, transforming garments, bio-responsive accessories and cell phone controlled clothing.

A sneak peek of Diana Eng’s design sketches can be found in the slide-show below.

The FashionWare runway show is part of the second annual MommyTech Summit, one of six one-day conferences produced by Living in Digital Times to analyze how technology affects consumers from children and college students to parents and senior citizens.

The FashionWare runway show will be held at the Fashion Show Mall located at 3200 Las Vegas Blvd South on Friday, Jan. 7 at 6 pm.

[source: Press release via Diana Eng]

If you are inspiring fashion designer with parents working in the engineering field then it is almost pre-programmed that you will become very likely a fashion-technology designer like Vega Wang.

China born Vega Wang, a graduate of BA Fashion Design Womenswear in Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, got her calling for technology enhanced clothing while watching the BBC documentation ‘Deep Blue’.

The colorful life of sea creatures in the deep dark ocean impressed her so much to dedicate the design for her first collection to this magical light play of string rays and other deep sea creatures as design accent.

Being a design student of the 21st century she knew of course about light emitting textile designs, mostly made by using LEDs but she did not like the thickness of these components.

Consulting her engineering parents she got the tip of using EL foils which are commonly used in car dashboards, signage displays or sometimes safety harnesses as they are slim and able to light up evenly larger areas.

The result is a illuminated clothing collection called ‘Into the Deep‘ playing with deep blue illumination around the various dresses of this collection.

Watch the video below, showing a interview with Vega Wang and see how Vega has put the light into her collection.

Re-creating the biological light effects of the Deep Blue ocean creatures on the catwalk is a truly magical experience.

[via: Electricfoxy, video and images via: The Creator Project]

Illuminating clothing, footwear or other fashion accessories inspire a growing number of designer who explore the possibilities of active light elements for fashion.

Italian-born fashion designer Francesca Castagnacci used the active light element as her inspiration to design Heels that contain fiber-optic material to emit subtle, classy soft color shades, not the usual, bright flashing color spots but discrete illumination.

Luminex, one of the leading companies that create optical fibers specifically to be used for fashion applications produces long, very thin strands of pure glass or plastic, no thicker than a human hair. These optical fibers are suitable to be woven together with conventional yarn to fabric structures.

The optical fibers themselves are not light emitting but need one or more LEDs on each end of the fiber or  bundle of fibers. By using RGB (Red, Green Blue) LEDs a simple program on an IC can created almost any color shade. The LED light travels through the optical fiber which is specially treated to allow light coming out along the fibers surface.

The effect is a subtile, almost mystical illumination. These illumination fibers combine with the design skills of people like Francesca Castagnacci bring sparkle to high end fashion objects.

[source: Yatzer via Ecouterre]

Last Monday night illuminated clothing was literally the highlight at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Costume Institute Gala when singer Katy Perry switched on her LED-dress made by London based Cute Circuit a pioneer of wearable technology development and design.

The floor-length, pale pink and white dress looked like a ‘play save’ fashion choice of Katy Perry until she hit the ‘on’ button, starting a color explosion all over her dress, taking the breath away from spectators.

Cute Circuit not only managed to get high profile attention from the fashion universe for their work but also did an excellent job in promoting, showing off the potential technology enhanced clothing has to offer. Especially when textiles illuminate in millions of color shades.

Taking their experience from the Galaxy Dress by using tiny, full color LEDs lined up on ribbons concealed underneath the top layer of the chiffon gown, Katy Perry’s dress is a scaled down version, reducing the 24,000 LEDs to 3,000 LEDs which makes the power supply wearable with a couple of  light weight LiPo batteries underneath the dress around the hips.

The light control electronics on a flex circuit board is hand embroidered on a layer of silk. A bit odd is the on/off switch: a relatively large push switch, usually seen in vintage automotive application, is placed inside the bra ….. kind of a show-stopper of this otherwise remarkable LED dress.

Illuminated clothing has made a bright impact the past few month among the show biz world as artists and performers like to use color changing, dynamic light effects on their stage outfit in addition to the light shows on stage.

The future of fashion looks now even brighter with Katy Perry’s LED dress from Cute Circuit, introducing technology enhanced fashion to the red carpet events of the fashion universe.

Last week’s Fairytale Fashion Show at Eyebeam set a sparkling crown onto Diana Eng‘s extraordinary exploration into technology enhanced fashion.

Regrettable I was not able to organize myself in a way to witness this event in person but with the images and videos becoming available I can very well connect to the magical experience Diana’s electrifying fashion creates.

Diana send over the runway dresses full of sparkling light and dresses shift their shape – a dream for every fashionista.

Remarkable is the shape shifting technique she developed: origami style folded fabric animated via shape shifting wires (memory alloys), creating a beautiful, sophisticated effect on the Puff Sleeve Jacket.

The Twinkle Dress and Shirt are a excellent example of how to integrate the technology into the style of a garment (instead of hiding it). The hand embroidered circuit and sewable circuit board, the Twinkle Pad paint vivid rainbow colors on the garments.

And my favorite winner is: the El wire dress, an Aqua silk chiffon organically draped dress with electroluminescent wires integrated in the edges. The EL wires illumination is controlled by an accelerometer. Battery and electronics are integrated into a 3-D printed neck piece.

The soft EL wires flow with the silk chiffon creating an almost out-of-this-world elegance.

Diana Eng established herself with this Fairy collection as one of the masters of technology enhanced fashion who want to elevate their work above the mainstream, who like to explore the potential advanced soft electronics technologies and clothing build new synergies.

More photos from the Fairytale Fashion Show can be found via the Flickr photo stream of See-ming Lee.

Check out Diana’s Fairytale Fashion showing background information of the different technologies she used for her latest Haute Tech collection.

Diana Eng‘s fabulous project Fairytale Fashion which I highlighted last November is reaching it’s final stage, the Fairytale Fashion Show at Eyebeam on February 24, 7-9pm

Models will show Diana’s Haute Tech creations to the music from hacked video game consoles. A technology enriched fashion show demonstrating the potential of wearable electronics.

The Fairytale Fashion Collection utilizes technology to create magical yet (almost) ready to wear clothing. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are weaved into fabrics to create clothing with animated, blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes.

Diana started Fairytale last October and investigated various technologies and techniques, inviting wearable electronic enthusiast to give their views and opinions.

Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center nonprofit.

If you are in or around NY next Wednesday, check out if you can grab one of the limited seats for the fashion show by following this link.

[via: CraftZine]