Georgie Davies, BA student at the London College of Fashion made ‘Fashionable electronic’ headlines last week with the ‘Cellphone dress‘, her winning entry to the Sony Ericsson initiative working with the School of Fashion Design and Technology at the London College of Fashion to explore the relationship between technology and fashion.

Sony Ericsson, like many other A-brands in the technology world, work together with fashion experts to tap into the potential and desire of consumers to dress-up technology gadgets, making them more fashionable, more personalized, more emotional rather than have a technical, functional look.

Georgie Davies created a call indicating dress as she wanted to find a way to alert a person when their mobile phone rings in a noisy environment like a bar or club.

Her design: a cocktail dress made up of interactive scales, inspired by butterfly wings. When the phone rings, the dress subtly lights up, visually alerting of an incoming call.

There are various products in the market acting as visual help to indicate an incoming call in noisy environments but the dress from Georgie must be the most beautiful call indicator on the planet.

Georgie’s technology integration doesn’t look geeky or techy like some other interactive clothing concepts. She uses technology to beautify and emotionalize fashion design.

[source: Sony Ericsson press release]

Missing a call on your cell phone is annoying to say the least and can be disastrous in other cases. I don’t know anyone who did not have such unpleasant ‘missed that call’ experiences. The problem usually happens if you keep your phone in a pocket or bag. Not everyone likes to hold a cell phone in hands all time or have it tangling around the neck.

As many people as I know having the ‘missed call syndrome’ as many design concepts exist that promise to solve this issue by integrating visual incoming call alerts into easy to see items like clothing or bags. Only – not many of those great ideas did make it into the market yet.

It’s again up to ThinkGeek, famous for cross-over fashion-to-function products, to save the cell phone world by launching the ‘BluAlert Bluetooth Bracelet’.

The BluAlert bracelet uses Bluetooth technology to buzz discretely on your wrist when your phone rings. Even in the loudest room or the most boisterous dance-floor, you won’t miss it when BlueAlert goes off.

As added bonus, the BluAlert acts like a security device, once paired with your phone it will start buzzing when you are more than 5 meter separated from your phone.

Impressive also the standby time of 100 hours by a charging time of only 3 hours.

The BluAlert bracelet might not be the most fashionable wrist jewelry but it promises to do a great job in keeping the communication lines open all times.  Depending on the value you attach to the option to never miss a call again (and maybe never lose your cell phone again) you might actually be willing to make a fashion compromise and spend $49.99 to get your BluAlert.

Swany presented their Red-Dot award winning G-CELL™ during this years ispo winter 2008. The innovative G-CELL™ combines a high quality ski glove with an integrated Bluetooth cellphone link making it the first commercially high tech glove on the ski slopes.

The G-CELL™ has a microphone and speaker integrated as well as the call and end button, a light to give visual indication as well as a vibration function to indicate an incoming call. The integrated battery has power for 4 hours of chatting and 12 hours of standby time. A voice command dial system completes a fully featured cellphone function on your hand.

Available just in time for the coming winter sport season the g.cell has an suggested retail price of $495.- If this seems a bit of a steep price tag consider you get a high end ski glove with a fully featured Bluetooth handsfree device. Not so bad after all.

Gone are the times you had to rummage through your pockets to get on your cellphone only to discover your caller lost patients and gave up. With the G-CELL™ you are always one hand gesture away from your face to pick up all the important calls.

Skullcandy‘s H2O LINK Hydration Pack with integrated Speakers is already around for some time but it seems justified to beam it up as another option for iPod yielding hikers, bikers and other outdoor fans.

This ultra-cool backpack keeps you hydrated and entertained on those long trips. The build-in water bag holds 72 ounces in a water-tight container, the equivalent of as much as three bulky water bottles, but takes away only little space thanks to the water container design of the H2O LINK pack.

A sturdy straw that runs down the length of one strap makes it convenient to drink whenever you want without stopping your activities.

The same convenience as for the hydration come for the sound feature. The LINK system from Skullcandy integrated into the shoulder strap give you full control over your iPod and cell-phone. The phone answer button on the soft-touch panel works with every mobile phone. You’ll never again need to dig through your backpack to find your phone before it stops ringing!

To top off the high-tech functionality, the H2O LINK pack has a battery-powered amplifier that fire sound out of 60mm speakers embedded in the straps. The speakers are weather-impervious, carbon-fiber woven, custom built and designed to be used in rain, snow or shine.

The speaker function can be used with any portable audio player, not only the iPod by connecting the audio player via the 3.5mm headphone port.

This impressive feature list together with many expandable pockets and the durable nylon material of the H2O LINK makes it a very good choice for mountain bikers, hikers and anyone who enjoys the great outdoors.

The H2O LINK Hydration Pack with Speakers is available on this online store in Orange/Gray and on that online store in Gray/Black with Camo accents and cost on both stores $ 149.95

Solar power for clothing seems to be a hot item at the moment. We have posted the last few weeks numerous articles about the use of solar cell in clothing.

It turns out the German Hohenstein Institute is working for some time on a project called ‘Solartex‘ to explore the usability of solar cells in clothing.

On the upcoming Avantex, a International Forum for Innovative Apparel Textiles in Germany held from 10 to 12 June, the Hohenstein Institute will present a Jeans jacket with integrated solar cells to power electronic devices like MP3 player or cell phones.

The Hohenstein Institute optimized flexible solar panels and connection elements to fulfill all aspects and requirements of garments. The optimized solar panels and connections are mechanical robust to the extend that this Jeans Jacket can be washed in a conventional household washing machine without removing the solar panel or connector.

High attention was paid in view of manufactuerability of the seamless integration of the solar technology to ensure that this and similar Solar Jackets can be produced in quantities. This let us hope to see very soon ‘every-day-jackets’ with solar power generation capabilities.

You might think the energy output of such a small panel can not be that high, you might be right but being able to extend just a little bit the play time or talking time of your cell phone ‘free of charge’ is not bad either – right?

If you visit the Avantex 2007, you can find the sun capturing Jeans Jacket in hall 3.1 booth A23.

BQ Wireless is putting more control option for your cell phone into your hands, actually on your wrist.

The BlueQ Wristband gives a gentle vibration on your wrist when your cell phone receive a call.

This comes very handy in situations where you are not supposed to have your ring switched on like in meetings, theaters, cinemas, loud environments and sport activities. On other occasions you might have your cell phone stored away in a bag and you still don’t have a multi media backpack. The BlueQ Wristband helps you to not miss your important calls.

The BlueQ’s battery will work for about 30 hours on standby. Charging is done via USB, computer or direct AC connection with a conventional USB cable/charger like for the iPod.

Very interesting is the option BQ Wireless offers on their Website: you can upload any of your photos and have a custom made design of the skin. Make the BlueQ Wristband your style, is a nice and very useful helper to stay connected.

Although the BlueQ Wristband is not strictly speaking based on Wearable Electronic technologies it is nevertheless a technology packaged into the fabric of a wearable product. May we see such simple but very useful function merged into other Wearable Electronic products like clothing? Shouldn’t be too difficult – isn’t it?

No price indication of the BlueQ Wristband yet but it should come to the retail stores soon according the BQ Wireless Website.

[via: gizmodo]