What's going on in the intersection of technology and fashion?
Right now, designer Anouk Wipprecht is in Los Angeles (link is external), working out of the LA Makerspace from March 19th until April 18th. Wipprecht is known for projects like Intimacy (link is external) Black, a dress of smart e-foils whose transparency varies based on interpersonal encounters, and the gamified smart cocktail-dispensing DareDroid (link is external) dress.
She'll be hosting prototyping classes and a workshop.
On April 17th-19th, the 9th Annual Smart Fabrics (link is external) conference takes place right here in San Francisco.
The conference will feature "topics on wearable electronics in a military environment, the cultural effects of design, reshaping electronics for the human body, flexible and wearable printed silicon technology, to name a few." The opening keynote will be given by Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble (link is external).
At FIT, there's a fascinating exhibit (link is external) that "that explores fashion’s relationship to technology from the mid-18th century to our modern, computerized age."
This February featured several fashion/technology hackathons, including FashTech (link is external) at Startup Weekend in SF and the Hearst Fashion Hack (link is external) in New York. Startup Weekend hopes to do another Fashtech soon.
Last week at SXSW, Artefact user experience designer Jennifer Darmour presented (link is external) on smart clothing.
Your can read her excellent blog about wearable technology here. (link is external) We also recommend her manifesto (link is external) on making wearable computing actually wearable.
Also at SXSW, Google debuted an obnoxious concept piece: a talking shoe that nags you to exercise (link is external).
And tweets to your friends if you're virtuous enough to jog. Created in partnership with Adidas, this seems like the worst kind of invasive pseudo-AI to us. Luckily this isn't a planned product, just an experiment from Google's Art, Copy & Code (link is external) project.
Alexander Wang, now heading up Balenciaga, is currently doing a collaborative textile creation project (link is external) with Samsung, "to create a new print based on doodles, sketches and photographs that are being contributed via smartphone by some of the top names in fashion."
In the Fall, Vivienne Tam's QR code fashions (link is external) will be available.
We kind of dig the way the stencil-like images reference street art and the body as billboard, especially with the black lipstick.
Under Armour is launching (link is external) a wearable performance monitor that goes around your chest this spring, and may (link is external) be working on touchscreen clothing. Touchscreen clothing would be a lovely realization of Larry Niven's printed sleeve watches (link is external).
Gigaom has a breakdown (link is external) of other trends to watch for, like functional jewelry (think Jawbone UP (link is external) and the handsome Misfit Shine (link is external)), the watch (link is external) renaissance, and of course the battle to make (link is external) Google Glass cool.
That last isn't going so well; a search for "Google Glass dork" brings up 424,000 results.
We'll keep you posted on these and other developments, as we finally get clothes with a switch.
