It started with a shirt.
In one of the first passages I wrote for my current novel-in-progress, Aaron Stallard surprises Lexington Amis with a new outfit.
The shirt unfolded into a collaboration of silky red strips held together by straps of matching black leather. Was it actually a shirt? Lexi flipped the pieces around several times until they resembled one. Someone had confidence in his intelligence. This garment was a puzzle.
Why did Aaron choose this shirt? Where did he get it? These questions immediately birthed a new character, a fashion designer who shows up a few times later in the story.
That got me wondering more about what high-end fashion might look like 70 years in our future. What will it look like seven years from now?
Fashion designers are already incorporating what looks like futuristic technology into their designs.
Creator Anouk Wipprecht is “Rethinking Fashion in the Age of Digitalisation” with designs that include the skeletal Spider Dress (featured here), the Smoke Dress that surrounds its wearer in fog, and Living Pods, interactive flowery bots.
The sisters Ezra and Tuba Çetin created an “intelligent dress” that sets artificial butterflies aflight. You can see the design in motion in Intel’s video.
Using eye-tracking technology, designer Ying Gao has created a pair of dresses that light up and contort when stared at directly.
Other recent developments in wearable technology include cloth that blocks radio frequencies, unique uses of light and shadow as decoration, and couture that reacts to social media.
What we can look forward to, apparently, are clothing and accessories that interact with us and our environment for entertainment, decoration, and protection.
By the way, I wasn’t the first to imagine puzzling garments that serve more than one purpose. My fictional fashion designer was kinder on Lexi’s post-partying head than the incredibly imaginative Hussein Chalayan might have been.
sheknows.com presented nine more designs for you to enjoy in “Technology is taking over our dresses, and the results are amazing” (2014).
Shadow Fals 