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Courtesy of Anrealage

Courtesy of Anrealage

Courtesy of Anrealage

Courtesy of Anrealage

Early this year, during Paris Fashion Week, debuted color and texture changing clothes for their AW 23/24 collection.

Described as “a scientist of fashion,” Kunihiko Morinaga presented his own wearable take on (German for ‘environment’ or ‘surround-world’), a 19th-century concept developed by the German philosopher and biologist , that explores how living beings perceive their environment. According to Umwelt, all living beings perceive the same environment differently. A flower, for example, is perceived very differently by a bee and a human.

A presentation of all white 50s inspired silhouettes circled the runway and upon their return were transformed by passing UV light (sunlight) over them changing white into full color and patterned collections of prints, plaids, stripes, polka dots, lace. A second pass and solids become stripes. The experimental photochromic materials are produced in house, and resemble faux fur, velvet, lace, knits, jacquards, and satins.�� Because the intensity of natural sunlight is ever-changing, the colors are constantly shifting. The garments return to their original “white” when not exposed to UV rays for three minutes.

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The Difference Between E-Textiles and Smart Fabrics

E-textiles integrate electronics into or onto fabrics and enable the transfer of data (e.g. temperature, light, pressure, atmospheric conditions). They are primarily designed with wearable computing in mind and can either have electronic components woven together with fabric components, laminated, or sewn onto the fabric surface.

Smart fabrics are textiles that respond to outside stimuli (e.g. heat, chemicals) and may or may not have electronic components.

A t-shirt made with thermochromic fabric changes color according to temperature. Smart fabrics don’t have the same ‘intelligence’ as e-textiles such as collecting data or sending alerts.

Courtesy of [a]industry

Courtesy of [a]industry

When Textiles Talk Back to Tech

Former Puma British designer was always interested in pattern cutting when studying at the University of Manchester. His love of gaming, his curiosity about the construction and purposeful design of the MF70 military sniper jacket (“It has 11 functioning engineered pockets!” he explains), lead him to collaborate with of [a]industri.�� is a Swedish-based factory focused on innovative and sustainable garment design and production processes.

Challenging the traditional global fashion system, their collaboration (with a handful of others) resulted in the creation of the .

Covered in Adversarial Patterns (specially crafted graphics designed to look &/aatccnews2023-08a/8220;normal&/aatccnews2023-08a/8221; to humans but cause misclassification to machine learning models) the fabric was printed digitally on Kornit Digital printers. Reflective components were layered onto this to further trick artificial intelligence (AI) cameras.

The suit was designed and created digitally first using Clo3D Software. The ethos of the project is transparency for all involved. Credit for each creator is online and all get a percentage of profit. Garment patterns are shared on the Open Source Pattern Program. Customers can buy the garments using cryptocurrency.

Each MF70 comes with a HaLo chip to link digital and physical. This provides a certificate of authenticity, a connection between buyers and creators, concert tickets, admission to co-working spaces, and the ability to sign messages in the gaming world.

The 42 units sold out at US$2,500 each.��In April, the team presented their latest drop of the M70 inspired jacket at the Product Innovation Apparel Conference in Milan, Italy.

Courtesy Cap_able Design

In July 2022, Italian designer founded to create a line of knitwear that also disguises wearers from facial recognition software in AI CCTV cameras. Didero became interested in Adversarial Patterns as part of her masters research.

“The public outcry from the &/aatccnews2023-08a/8216;ban the scan campaign’ inspired her research, and by 2022 she had obtained a patent for the project,” explains co-founder .

Creating graphics is one thing, but creating knitwear is another.

Courtesy Cap_able Designs

“We had to transform pixels to stitch, and finding the right proportion and dimension takes time. Sometimes adversarial patterns don’t result in beautiful textiles. We had to transform these graphics into something that is functional and pretty,” Busani explains.�� The team works with programmers at Shima Seiki.

The jacquard contains up to 14 colors. Yarns were developed by Filmar in Italy and the team is constantly experimenting with new yarns and techniques to focus on lowering environmental impact.

And because AI is powered by Machine Learning, the team is continuously researching with MIT Boston and Politecnico di Milano to keep outsmarting AI.

Manufacturing is not on-demand, but the product is created in limited quantities. The Hoodie retails for €560.

The Art of the Impractical

“Fashion is about individuality, and not necessarily about the practical. It’s about the impractical; it’s about the individual,” explains , co-founder and CEO of , an award-winning London-based digital retail agency that creates consumer experiences in the fashion and beauty industries by humanizing technology.�� Their work includes (reported in ��ɫֱ��Review Vol. 17, No. 6 November/December 2017 DOI: 10.14504/ar.17.6.3)

“A lot of e-textiles and wearables are about the individual, ‘How many steps have I taken? How many calories have I consumed?’ But the really interesting part is when it becomes about the world.”

Holition created limited-edition garments for a luxury French brand that changed from gray to pink, based on the air quality. “They were not commercial. They couldn’t be washed. The change was based on a cabbage extract. People wore the items not because they were informing them, but because they wanted to express themselves. But in the background, the apparel was checking out the pollution levels in Paris while the wearers were going for a stroll or taking their children to school. The data reported back through a blue tooth device. And we were building a map of Paris, in a very different way than Google does with people wearing cameras in backpacks. We found that cleaner areas had a higher standard of living. Meanwhile the boxes the government had put on the streets to measure pollution levels weren’t working. We were actually taking data away from the government, and in this case allowing a luxury brand to be able to inform them.”

Courtesy Holition

Commissioned by the British Fashion Council, Holition collaborated with and her London-based exploration house to create the ,��a color and pattern-changing ceramic wearable sculpture, powered by human electro-magnetism.

“This was around the time that Kate Spade took her life, and models in the industry were coming forward about mental health abuse,” he explains. “Together we built a dress that scanned the brain, and based on the wearer’s mood, the dress changed colors. It’s like wearing your heart on your sleeve. And a lot of people who wore that dress felt very uncomfortable about showing how they actually felt.”

“I have a jacket that turns from green to red reflecting my carbon footprint.�� When I get off a plane, it’s red. I don’t want a red jacket. So, I do things to offset my carbon footprint to turn my jacket green again. The jacket has changed my behavior,” Chippindale explains. “It doesn’t matter what the government says, or what environmentalist Hedda Grabler says, or the newspaper lecturing or educating us. It’s much harder than that to change people’s behavior. Our projects are getting people to think about how we can change our behavior.”

“At one point the Dress for Our Time—made from a damaged refugee tent illuminated with led lights that went on 7 seconds after a refugee applied for asylum—was on display at the Science Museum in London. I overheard two people talking about the 67.8 million journeys the dress was tracking at the time. One reaction was ‘wow that’s a lot of people coming over here. We need better border controls!’ But the other person expressed another view—that we need to help each other. The dress was an entry point for this dialogue. And that’s the point. We need to have conversation.”

Craig Crawford is a two time Tabbie award winning author and founderprenuer of , ��a London-based consulting firm specializing in the digital transformation of brands; Twitter @getamobilelife; Instagram getamobilelife; +44 07834584785