With the help of thermochromic ink technology Webelow Wear is painting an animation on T-Shirts showing the global warming effect on the polar ice cap over the past 30 years.

Webelow Wear’s Polar Ice Cap Shirt is the most sensible T-Shirt design I have seen. Sensible in terms of the message it conveys and sensible in the purest sense – it senses the temperature. This concept, made possible with the use of color changing inks, shows the greenhouse melting effect in a very impressive and surprising way.

As long as the ambient temperature together with the bodies heat radiation stays below 96.8 Fahrenheit (36 degree Celsius) the T-Shirt shows the polar ice cap size from 1980 but the ice will start melting away when the temperature rises to 96.8 Fahrenheit and reveals the size of the polar ice we have now in 2009.

A shocking, beautiful and fashionable transformation with a strong message. The Polar Ice Cap Shirt can be picked up for $30.- at Webelow Wear’s online shop.

The short video clip below shoes the transformation of the polar ice cap on the T-Shirt:

Connecting to our article about color changing embroidery thread based on the Thermochromatic principle using bright light for the color change, we found another interesting, color altering  embroidery thread based on the glow-in-the-dark technology.

Glow-in-the-dark products contain usually phosphors, a substance that radiates visible light after being energized and give off this energy as visible light.

The process of charging and discharging can be repeated many times up to 10 years before the phosphor looses it’s light charging ability. Chemists created thousands of chemical substances that behave like a phosphor but added other features like different colors, the time needed to energize, length of time the light radiation will last and so on.

Australian based Glow Paint Industries offers (next to many other companies) a range of glow-in-the-dark products, one of them interesting to our topic of interactive, color charging changing clothing.

Their new range of Glow-in-the-Dark Embroidery Thread is available in six different colors to create glow-in-the-dark patterns or logo’s on your clothing.

The glow pigments are in the fiber and not on the fibers surface making them suitable for washing and rinsing.

Imagine to create a embroidery pattern on a shirt combining the Thermochromatic thread which activates when stepping into bright light, at the same time charging the Glow-in-the-Dark part of the embroidery pattern which in turn starts radiating a different color after sunset – a cool looking imagination.

Color changing chameleon fashion for Babies? Not exactly, color changing clothing yes but not for fashion but to indicate/alert when a baby’s body temperature rises above 98F (37C).

I posted about the thermochromatic textiles from Bodyfader, T-Shirts and sweaters that change color from black to white for example. I have a couple of shirts for testing, they are fun to use but I am not so sure if I would trust them to switch reliable at exactly pre-set temperatures.

The inventor of the Babyglow jumpsuit, Chris Ebejer (UK) is convinced he can switch accurately having spend over the past 6 years approx. $1.14 million for the development of Babyglow including temperature-sensitive molecules that are embedded into the jumpsuit’s smart fabric material.

Without having the details of his invention on hand it sounds a bit like the Thermochromatic technology which has been around for some time.

I could not find infos on the reliability or clinical test of the temperature accuracy but Chris Ebejer managed to sell the world wide patent rights of his Babyglow technology for around $20 million to UK clothing manufacturer Quality Workwear 4U.

The Babyglow jumpsuits should hit the stores this October for a suggested retail price of £20.- ($33.-) in three color shades, pink, blue and pastel green, all turning white when the baby’s temperature rises above 98F (37C).

[via: Gizmodiva]

Color changing clothing radiate a magical fascination by many. Recently I ordered color changing T-Shirts to see how the magic at work.

My experience: surprised views from people around me, questioning their world of fashion view as my T-Shirt keeps on changing it’s color pattern constantly. It helps that I am living in a very warm, tropical place with high temperatures outside and nicely cooled shopping malls, coffee shops and restaurants.

Coming in from the hot outside into these locations the T-Shirt starts changing color, in some areas faster than in others creating ever changing, random patterns.

The color changing chameleon effect comes from Bodyfader‘s Thermochromatic textile processing which offer a very robust impregnation of the Thermochromatic ink for textiles making them washable without loosing the color changing effect.

I know this color changing clothing have been popular in the 90s but they still make an impact occasionally. It’s a nice summer, sun and fun fashion style. Not necessarily wearable electronic but I am experimenting now on ways to activate the color change with a bit of electrical, conductive yarn magic.

If you are interested into Chameleon Thermochromatic clothing without electrical magic you could start looking around here.

One of the dreams of many fashionista’s is to change the outfit or at least the color of it without changing clothes.

The reason for doing this can be: having a bit of fun by changing, like chameleons, the color in response to the surroundings or for a quick adjustment of the color coordination of the outfit is needed to attend an unplanned event on short notice.

On a more practical side, color active clothing for emergency personnel could help increase the visibility = safety of those people.

To realize color changing clothing seems more difficult as most other e-textile technologies. Lot of work and resources are dedicated in developing such technology as efforts like Lumalive is showing. Other technologies like EL (Electroluminescence) technology is used for a lot of fun decals on T-Shirt’s but they are add-on to clothing rather than integrated.

Other technologies which allow a bit of a color change on clothing are Photochromic, Hydrochromic and Thermochromic ink. The first reacts on light, the second on liquid (water) and the third on temperature.

Clothing impregnated or having printed pattern using one of those inks will change from one color shade to another when exposed to a certain amount of light, moisture or heat.

Although the color shifting capability of the inks is limited they can still create nice, interactive (with the environment) designs like the S.A.D. T-Shirt example or the UV-Bikini show.

Another great example is the ‘Aqua chameleon swimming suit‘ design from Yun Ding, a textile designer specializing in printing ,textile surface and fashion textile area.

I am a bit amazed not seeing more of ink based color changing clothing in the shops as at the same time a lot of glitter elements are added to clothing to create a color changing effect by light reflection.