Fiber optic dress changes color on a whim

London-based designer Amy Rainbow Winters showed in a FashionWare area at the Consumer Electronics Show the dress that changes its colors. The item is made of fabric with fiber optics woven in and sensors in the sleeves. Light traveled through the cloth, which glowed blue. With a touch of a sleeve, Winters changed the color. "If you feel like having a purple, the dress will be purple," Winters said on a Ten TV interview. "If you later feel like having red, you have red. You just look at the sleeve and decide what color you want." The fiber-optic dresses cost about $3,000 to make, but the price can rise depending on the design, according to Winters, whose creations are on display online at rainbowwinters.com

Winters designs fabric and clothes, then collaborates with technologists to made the materials needed. She works with many techno-fabrics, including some that react to sound, sun or water. Nearby she had on display a dress with motion sensors in the cloth that changed colors if the wearer jumped. Fabric she creates can be made into just about any garment. Her creations are custom, and have been used in entertainment productions such as music videos or to catch eyes in ads. She is not in the ready-to-wear market.


See the interview here:

Wearable book lets readers feel the fiction

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a "wearable" book which allows the reader to experience the protagonist’s emotions.

Using a combination of sensors, the book senses which page the reader is on and triggers vibration patterns through a special vest.

"Changes in the protagonist’s emotional or physical state trigger discrete feedback in the wearable [vest], whether by changing the heartbeat rate, creating constriction through air pressure bags, or causing localised temperature fluctuations" the researchers said.

The vest contains a personal heating device to change skin temperature and a compression system to convey tightness or loosening through airbags.

The vest also changes vibrations to match the mood of the book.

The book itself has 150 LEDs to create ambient light which changes depending on the setting and mood of the book.

The project, dubbed "Sensory Fiction", was created by Felix Heibeck, Alexis Hope, Julie Legault at MIT's Media Lab.
It was one of the projects created in the Science Fiction to Science Fabrication class.


The researchers used a science fiction novella, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree Jr, as their prototype story for creating the wearable book.
They chose it because it "showcases an incredible range of settings and emotions. The main protagonist experiences both deep love and ultimate despair, the freedom of Barcelona sunshine and the captivity of a dark damp cellar."
Describing their project, the researchers wrote: "Sensory fiction is about new ways of experiencing and creating stories.
"Traditionally, fiction creates and induces emotions and empathy through words and images. By using a combination of networked sensors and actuators, the Sensory Fiction author is provided with new means of conveying plot, mood, and emotion while still allowing space for the reader’s imagination. These tools can be wielded to create an immersive storytelling experience tailored to the reader.
"To explore this idea, we created a connected book and wearable [vest]. The ‘augmented’ book portrays the scenery and sets the mood, and the wearable [vest] allows the reader to experience the protagonist’s physiological emotions."

100 years of fashion in 10 seconds

British Mall presents 100 years of East London Fashion in 100 seconds. The Viral Factory produced this short film celebrating 100 years of fashion in East London in 100 seconds. In the spot, a guy and a gal start dancing like it's 1911, and by the time they reach 2011, they've tiptoed their way through 100 years' worth of costume changes.

This video features a century of style icons that shaped couture and alluring amazons to the ladies of today. Each timeless trend and modern movement is elegantly shown through movements that define those trends, because fashion is not just wearing clothes....it merging textures and shapes with gestures. Thus a human being is a mix of fashion clothes, gestures, ideas, dancing movements that define his or her era.