Throughout the last few years we have seen a proliferation of garments integrating wearable technologies. Light effects and in particular LED lights were one of the main tech features incorporated into clothes and garments. Though the idea had already been explored in the early '80s by Italian avant-garde designer Cinzia Ruggeri in her behavioural garments, it kept on constantly returning on the modern runways.
As technology developed we have seen innovative luminous fabrics, laser dresses such as Hussein Chalayan's "Airborne" gown, glowing one-off pieces and dynamic designs mainly devised as costumes for music performances (think about Studio XO's designs for Black Eyed Peas or Moritz Waldemeyer's for OK Go).
While it is nowadays possible to walk the fine line between fashion and fetishism with Kiyoyuki Amano's "Hikaru Skirt" (or "Shining Skirt"), a skirt equipped with tiny LED lights on the inside that illuminate the wearer's thighs changing colour thanks to the integrated miniature gyro sensors (colours can also change using a smartphone), or simply step into the kitsch realm by choosing wedding gowns covered in LED lights (it remains a mystery why you would like to look like a Christmas tree on your wedding day...) or come up with your own DIY project using strips of LEDs.
So, upon seeing earlier on this week a LED dress appearing on the ZAC Zac Posen runway in New York, many critics must have felt like King Leonardo in that '60s cartoon series in front of the umpteenth television set. Yet, as his loyal Odie Cologne used to tell him, "This is a special one".
Zac Posen's LED dress integrated indeed technology developed by fashion engineer Maddy Maxey, mentor of the Google-backed initiative Made with Code, and electronics from Adafruit.
The dress looked very simple with short sleeves and a mesh skirt and included over 300 LED lights that were programmed to emit different animated patterns controlled by an Adafruit FLORA device.
The pattern of multi-coloured LED lights - that, Posen explained, was inspired by "Los Angeles after dark" - was designed by students and in particular girls from organisations such as Black Girls Code, the Flatiron School, Girls Who Code and Lower East Side Girls Club. The results of their coding skills were displayed by Coco Rocha at the very end of the ZAC Zac Posen diffusion line show in the auditorium at Manhattan's Industria Superstudio.
Made with Code was created with the hope of inspiring girls to try coding, becoming creative with projects that use Blockly, a visual coding system designed by Google, and hopefully start considering computer science as a viable career. Google's Made with Code initiative hopes indeed to change the current trends that state that fewer than 1 percent of high school girls plan to study computer science in college.
Fifty girls involved in the project also had the chance to actually attend the show and see their work lighting up the runway.
It must be said that the only weak link in all this story is actually the dress design: it's great to see what the Flora circuit can do and what young girls can create, but the dress design looked a bit bland and simplistic (well, the collection was certainly average and mainly featured sporty leopard-and-palm print suits, A-line, flared and shirt dresses, shorts sets and garments with honeycomb mesh). The bland design is not the fault of technology, though, is it?
So, the curse of the LED dress is here to stay, but, hopefully, in future we will see new and more useful boundaries between the physical and the digital being shattered and better version of Haute Tech on the runways, such as clothing that responds to the changes in our bodies and signal our conditions (garments signalling high or low blood pressure and maybe the heart rate could be interesting and useful). In a nutshell, it's only a matter of fashion seasons before the LED dress will turn into a proper little black dress for the digital age.
For the time being Posen's dress remains the latest chapter in the love story between fashion, (luxury) and technology that has been developing in the last few years.
As this post closes more chapters are already being written: Intel is sponsoring New York Fashion Week, and drones will be offering new and different perspectives flying overhead at certain shows, while MemoryMirrors, devices that remember and alter the image of the users according to precise instructions, will allow users to try on different outfits.
Chromat, CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists, will be broadcasting tonight's runway show on live.chromat.co in 360° and 180° panoramic 3D views via flash on any desktop browser; Misha Nonoo will have an "Insta-show" (a catwalk event via Instagram, scheduled for 12th Sept) and Ralph Lauren partnered with Periscope to live stream his S/S 2016 NYFW Show (on 17th Sept) to London's Piccadilly Circus.
If you really don't have the time to follow NYFW, though, but you like fashion and interactive hands on technology, well, check out the Bao Bao Music application inspired by Issey Miyake's iconic bag. It offers the chance to play three different sets of music but - you're warned - it's highly addictive and you may end up playing music and coming up with your tracks rather than be working on something more important...
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