Several pieces have been written about Intel’s fashion partnership initiative. This from the 2-November New York Times. Generally they seem to imply that these partnerships will find the correct mix of art and technology.
I find the results to date wanting .. sort of here’s some tech, how to I build a container or wire it in somehow? I’m much more impressed by new materials and fabrication techniques. Work on smart fabrics that self regulate temperature for example. Groundwork is being laid for the future. A few serious designers like Iris van Herpen are exploring the space, but it will take time to find the right voice.
When I was a student a strange little publication called the Journal of Irreproducible Results published a few joke science and technology papers. It evolved and began to add unusual real papers and paved the way for the very real Ig Nobel Prize awards. The classic JIR paper was originally published in the Cal Engineer by Charles Seim in the mid fifties - A Stress(ed) Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown.1 Over the years it had become legendary and known simply as SAOASEG.
The trigger for remembering the SAOASEG was a racked piece recommended by Jheri - Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible?
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While there are suddenly a ton of options out there for women, not all of them are good. "There is no piece of clothing that is more difficult to design well than a sports bra," says LaJean Lawson, a breast researcher and consultant for Champion Athletics. "There are so many different parameters. It's the most hooked into cultural stereotypes. You have to think about sweat, support, chafing, straps, slippage, and then looking cute. That's a really long list of conflicting design requirements."
Lawson has been studying breasts, their movement, and the bras that contain them for Champion since 1984, when she tested the original Jogbra. In 1987, she evaluated the seven sports bras Champion had on offer using a 16mm film camera. Today, she employs the same methods that White's lab does, using complex camera tracking to test hundreds of bras both from Champion and other companies. "I just ordered $1,000 worth of Victoria's Secret sports bras to test in the lab," Lawson says, "and they called me and asked, ‘Who are you, and why are you buying all these bras?'"
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A very real and serious design problem no one has yet sorted out. Design and materials are currently not up to the task, but a good deal of experimentation is underway to observe and better understand the problem. The tech future of fashion will come from seamlessly solving real problems rather than being involved in a nail hunt. We're beginning to see this and collaborations are centrally important, but they have to be deeper than Intel’s.
Over the centuries a lot of technology has been driven by textiles - arguably programming had its roots in looms. New classes of textiles are being developed that have the ability to self-regulate skin temperature along with other human centered properties.2 New manufacturing techniques are being developed that will better enable fit and mass customization and infrastructures for automated provenance reports are being designed. A good deal of change is in the wind - change much deeper than the fast fashion that is the topic of the day.
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1 Recently republished on Neatorama. The book of the title is great with other classics like The Postal System Input Buffer Device - a very nerdy look at post box design...
2 this is a very hot and cool area. APRA-E has fueled the fire with grants to develop clothing that can reduce heating and cooling loads. Clothing has always been something of a microclimate and improvements are possible. UCSD's ATTACH project.
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just a quick post - nothing dramatic on the recipe from other than enjoying roasting vegetables. The trick is to get enough heat. I like the variety that comes with roasting somewhat different sizes - so be sloppy with your chopping.
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