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'Smart' Clothing: A Fashion Show 130

Posted by Hemos from the building-it-right-into-you dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Julia Fields wrote a very well-documented article about 'smart' clothing that "would do everything from deliver a massage and improve your golf swing to change colour according to the weather" for the Edinburgh Evening News, "Tech out the latest in fashion." Fields spoke with Professor George Stylios from the Heriot-Watt University School of Textiles and Design who is working on clothes that can save lives. "This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing," he said. For more information, please read the original article. But for illustrations, visit this photo gallery. It contains pictures of Elise Co's Puddlejumper jacket, Hussein Chalayan's airplane dress, Adeline Andre's ScentOrgan dress and other smart clothes."
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'Smart' Clothing: A Fashion Show More

'Smart' Clothing: A Fashion Show

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  • Smell Bubble (Score:4, Funny)

    by gricholson75 ( 563000 ) * on Monday October 13, 2003 @10:46AM (#7198950) Homepage
    The objective is for the wearer to create their own personal 'smell bubble'
    I think our sysadmin already has this clothing.
  • Smart Clothing? Does this mean I won't get yelled at for my clothes not matching anymore?!
    • I'm color blind. I get this all the time. My closer friends know that I'm color blind and don't question my clothes anymore, but people that I run into (at the bar or whatever), do still mention it to me from time to time. I personally thought it was REALLY damn hard to "match" a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a plaid flannel, but apperently it's possible.
    • There is nothing smart or fashionable about this "clothing"
    • If this stuff runs Linux, can SCO sue the pants off me?
    • Smart Clothing? Does this mean I won't get yelled at for my clothes not matching anymore?!

      Imagine how smart clothing would have to be to make the typical Slashdotter look stylish.

      I mean, I mean, we could solve the problem of frickin' world hunger with the intelligence required to make Joe Dances With Trolls In Mom's Basement look absolutely fab.

      We're talking Seymour Cray Casual Pants. We're talking Deep Blue Denim Jeans, We're talking a Beowulf Cluster of neck Ties.
    • Smart Clothing? Does this mean I won't get yelled at for my clothes not matching anymore?!
      No, it means the clothes themselves will yell at you, freeing up your wife/girlfriend/mother for more productive tasks.
  • I like the rain jacket:

    High voltage inverter to power EL panels + water + human body = fun!

  • Also designed at the MIT by Megan Galbraith, Elroy is "an illuminating dress that encodes time information. The panels periodically reaarrange their illuminated pattern to express time to the wearer."
    slap!!!
    I wasn't staring at your boobs, I was checking the time!!
  • Have you guys seen Tuxedo starring Jackie Chan?, Id like to have that suit so that I could kung-fu all of sco

  • Not for me (Score:4, Funny)

    by eenglish_ca ( 662371 ) <eenglishNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday October 13, 2003 @10:52AM (#7198993) Homepage
    I plan on keeping my clothes for at least another 20 to 30 years after looking at the pictures in the article. Those clothes are absolutely hideous and when I press buttons I want something hard to push against, thats half the fun. Who wants to emit all of these "magic wellness molecules." Sounds a bit questionable to me. So you can keep smart clothes I'll stick with my current dumb clothes.
    • "Smart" and "fashion" in one sentence? Give me a break! Repeat after me, kids: smart [thebee.com] people [oreillynet.com] don't [oreillynet.com] need [uni-frankfurt.de] fashion [caldera.com]. Let's face it: fashion is only for people who need some way to make up for the obvious lack of intelligence.
  • In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing...

    Victoria's Secret to merge with Fry's. Film at 11.
  • So I'll have to strip down to answer my ringing undies*?

    *Spiderman underoos.
  • coupling the obsolescence cycle of computers with that of clothing. So when fashion trends come back around, you can't pull the clothes out of the back of the closet to wear again.

    "Hey, cool tie! Oh, waitaminute... it's ancient. It only has a 133MHz StrongARM processor. How droll."

    - Leo
  • "This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing"

    I predict a new meaning to the AT&T commercial slogan -- "Reach out and touch someone!"

  • Does this mean the possibility of wearing Microsoft pants the crash?
  • ...piercings of the mommy/daddy parts? I mean, why go through that pain if I can get the Ren and Stimpy boxers with the built in massager? Hell this may even save my marriage ;-)

  • what? (Score:2, Funny)

    by jguevin ( 453329 )
    The objective is for the wearer to create their own personal 'smell bubble', by delivering a spray of magic wellness molecules to key points of the body in order to activate the smell centre. "magic wellness molecules"? "key points of the body"? What the hell is this talking about? Did they extract the magical essence of 100 smurfs? Have they finally discovered real mitichlorides (sp?)? Or does it just mean, "When your pits stink, they'll get sprayed with deodorant"?

  • Like most fashion shows, one has to ask: "Who in the hell would wear this stuff?!"

    With the exception of the stylish and practical Burton Amp jacket (also mentioned on /. some time back), the rest of the stuff is gaudy at best. I'll stick with my low-tech jeans and T-shirts for now, thank you.

    • Agreed - but then again, they're more just working on getting the technology down. And why use some fancy, stylish clothing when you're going to be cutting it up and inserting stuff and all that, just to show off the technology? Besides - would you really trust the sense of style of the type of people that would develop this technology?

      I suspect once they actually get it working decently, then it'll start working it's way into clothing that is worth wearing. Maybe those $80 jeans some places sell will a

    • With the exception of the stylish and practical Burton Amp jacket (also mentioned on /. some time back), the rest of the stuff is gaudy at best. I'll stick with my low-tech jeans and T-shirts for now, thank you.

      True, but at least people are finally coming up with some useful applications of smart clothing. Clothing that changes its properties (and not just the color or lighting) according to the body or the environment. Clothing that monitors your heart. That Amp jacket is quite handy as well, I suppos

      • My point is not that Smart Clothes are stupid, it's that the designs of most of the one featured in the article look horrendous (like the small-bubble). I wasn't griping about the functionality, but the look! Read more carefully next time.

  • Changes colour according to the weather. Sigh. What about changing its waterproofness according to the weather? This is on a par with "So which car would go faster, a red one or a blue one?"
    • "So which car would go faster, a red one or a blue one?"
      The one with flames [gotfuturama.com] painted on it.
    • It's just fun. Like those shoes that light up with every step that children get to wear. I think it would be really cool, on a drizzly night, to see pedestrians hurrying by, quietly flickering. ...especially if I was indoors :-)

      The only thing that would bother me about the raincoat is power consumption. I wouldn't want to change the batteries on my coat all the time. I bet they could power it the same way they power those no-battery-no-wind wristwatches that get recharged by tiny weight swinging whenever y
      • They did make those for adults/teens in the mid nineties. All the major sneaker compaines (Nike, Reebok etc) had atleast one model. I remember because for about a six month period I begged my Mom to buy me a pair. She of course vehemently refused.

        I think back on it now as one of the few (well maybe more than few) times my Mother was right. They were the height of fashion at the time but knowing my luck with such things I would probably have started wearing them the day after they went out of style and retur


    • This is on a par with "So which car would go faster, a red one or a blue one?"

      The blue one of course because it absorbs more of the higher freq. light than the red one. ;)
      • ""So which car would go faster, a red one or a blue one?" The blue one of course because it absorbs more of the higher freq. light than the red one. "

        No, the red one is faster. Remember the Doppler Shift [ucla.edu]: the car that is red is the one that has already passed you.
  • Dumping my snowboard wearing the Burton ski jacket. With each tumble the station & volume changes.

    Not only will I LOOK bad, I'll sound stupid too.

    Sounds like a scene out of the Simpsons:
    D'oh! "today in the news" D'oh! "Exit light, Enter night.." D'oh! "I just called to say.." D'oh!
  • As much fun as surfing the internet from your shirt would be, what about just smart-matching clothes, that change color to match each other + your skin tone, etc? That would be awesome for us matching-clothing challenged persons.
  • Why would you ever want to wear clothes to change color based on the weather? Suddenly, your well-coordinated ensemble turns into a clown suit... sounds unappealing to me.

  • Fashion (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    Well TBH as much as I would like intellgent clothing which these clothes just remind me of saftey suits used in nuclear reactor. Now I know fashion designers live on cloud9 but if they look at the target market of geeks who will be the first adopters it ain't going to help

    Rus

  • pants2pants (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:08AM (#7199100)
    "(AP) In the news today, the RIAA has sued Martin Winkleberry of Moose Wart, North Dakota alledging that his Levi's Dockers downloaded $660,000,000 million worth of copyrighted music files. During the arrest, Officer Ludmax was overheard to comment 'Is that a complete set of Beatles album files in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?' "

  • Um... (Score:4, Funny)

    by da3dAlus ( 20553 ) <dustin.grau@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:08AM (#7199101) Homepage Journal
    Pardon me, miss, but I can see your panties through your "smell bubble". [See the Picture] [weblogs.com]


  • I'm still holding out for that +5 Cloak of Non-Dweebiness.[*]

    When I get that and my flying car, the girls will love me.

    [*] Cannot be worn by Rangers, Paladins, Television Meteorologists, and other naturally square characters.

  • SCO problems (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:11AM (#7199120)
    If any of the computerized clothing items contain Linux programming, SCO could literarlly sue the pants off you.
  • This [slashdot.org], way back in June.
  • HyperColor shirts make fashion comeback! We all surrender to our color changing overlords... in Soviet Russia... with hot grits... in Natelie Portmans pants... Seriously though, while satisfying the geek kid in me, these clothes really don't do much for the practical adult side. Until my ungeekly girlfriend wants technofied clothes, these aren't gonna sell much of anything, at least in Europe/US. I envision this stuff taking off in Japan much sooner than here. That's where I would try to market it.

  • Excellent (Score:3, Funny)

    by fuzzybunny ( 112938 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:18AM (#7199172) Homepage Journal

    Forget the age-old technique of reducing your nervousness as a public speaker by imagine everyone without pants.

    Now you can just make their pants fall down!

    I can see it already: Microsoft RPC (Remote Pants Call) vulnerability discovered.

    You could cause a buffer overflow...in someone's pants!

    What about viruses? Could I unleash W32@Pants on the unsuspecting fashion world?

    What if your jacket was a Mac and your pants run Windows? Would you need Samba to let your pants and yourt shirt communicate?

    Man, why didn't I go into fashion design--you could blame mismatched colors and patterns on the user--RTFM, you idiot, your tie's crashed...
    • Just wait till "they" get color e-paper figured out. Paper isn't too off from cotton... t would be nice to have one nice quality shirt that would change to be what ever pattern you wanted. You could have "unlimited" clothing selection by have a "different" pattern applied to your shirt.
    • I OWNZOR UR BOXERS
  • > This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or
    > 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions
    > will become part of our intimate clothing,"

    A TV set in my underwear? No thanks.
  • Oh yeah, I'll get this one for my gf's birthday, I'm sure she will _love_ it and let me feel her appreciation for it!

    </sarcasm>
  • Wait until you start wearing one of these jackets. Except for the see-through smell jacket your looking at a body-cavity search!
  • Making a shirt that will improve your golf swing is the easy part. The difficult part will be getting it past the Royal & Ancient dress code committee.
  • Burton do (or did) a jacket with connectors for an iPod complete with controls on the sleeve. A friend has one and it's well cool. Expensive though at $500. Amp Jacket PR release [apple.com]
  • televisions will become part of our intimate clothing

    So in 20-30 years it will be fashionable to look like a Teletubby? Scary.

  • Notice the last entry in sports bras. Those engineers have a partially clothed women in the room and their looking at their wires and scope!

    Insert joke about engineers getting a feel here

    • Notice the last entry in sports bras. Those engineers have a partially clothed women in the room and their looking at their wires and scope!

      Like this huge version of that photo [philips.com]?

      hears a splat sound on hundreds of geeks' monitors

      --Quentin
    • Notice the last entry in sports bras. Those engineers have a partially clothed woman in the room and their looking at their wires and scope!

      How do you know that the woman isn't also an engineer?

      Insert lame Wonder-Bra joke here

    • Those are not engineers, they are actors trying to look like engineers. The men are dressed 20 years out of date (though the equipment isn't qite that old). No engineer dresses like that anymore. The biggest clue, however, is their smile. It isn't the sort of half smile of an engineer comptemplating a hard problem it is the half smile of an actor who was just told drop the coversation to look "busy".

      I wouldn't ahve said the above based on just the men though. They could caught in the act of switching

  • "Barb, look at Joe. Why is he wearing a tuxedo?"

    "He just switched to Linux"
  • I am always forgetting my pda and phone so how cool to *always* have them with me by default.

    With mp3's always there and my documents this would be fantastic...

    However I am not convinced about typing emails on my jumper though I do think animated t-shirts are round the corner....

  • This will put new meaning to the shirt that says:
    C:\dos\
    C:\dos\run\
    \run\dos\run\

    -seriv
  • "In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing..."

    And we wonder why the Machines will rise up to enslave us! [whatisthematrix.com]

  • 10. "Dude, you're getting new underwear"

    9. The Apple Figleaf Newton

    8. Atari FunPants, complete with joystick.

    7. The deceased laid out in a shroud that is running *BSD, all ready for the funeral.

    6. Trademark Gateway-brand white underwear with large brown spots all over it.

    5. Levi's button-USB

    4. Blue jeans, blue tooth.

    3. The digital divide starts to really hit the nudist colonies pretty bad.

    2. Hands-free trouser-mouse

    1. If you wear clothes, you have to pay $669 to SCO.

    0. "I, for one, welcome our new
  • I'm hoping they integrate some GPS tracking, or going to the gym could cost you thousands.
  • "This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing,"

    How futuristic! TV and telephone in my underpants!

  • Gnomes' problem finally sollved? (Score:3, Funny)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @12:25PM (#7199667) Journal
    1. Collect underwear

    2. Self-collecting underwear

    3. Profit!
  • if the "smart clothing" crashes, does the wearer have to strip naked, reboot his clothes and put them back on?
  • would do everything from deliver a massage and improve your golf swing to change colour according to the weather

    Could it spell color the way I want it to? Or is it to busy giving me a massage to print the message?
    • (I know you like us Brits and our quaint spelling really, but I couldn't resist)
    • Well, if you want colour spelled without an o, you can use the extra one you have to go on the end of that "to".

      too much, too far, too busy

      to spell, to see, to go

      two cows, two countable objects
  • I go to a lot of conferences, etc. where you are required to wear a badge. Some of these are pin-on or magnet-based... *pins badge on* ZZZT... Damn! I just spiked my system bus! And you thought the tags in the collar of your shirt itched, just wait until you start experiencing "hot-spots". I'd prefer my smart clothing in accessory items that can be used with different outfits.
  • Sometimes it's fun to read a technology article written by someone who has no clue. I especially liked the bits about the "spray of magic wellness molecules," and the researchers "demonstrating the technology device." Alas, I know and work with many people who already have their own personal scent bubbles.

  • Your jacket is now dry.
  • Another project at the renowned Central Saint Martins Innovation Centre in London is integrating electronics into fabrics that would allow consumers to customise their clothing by downloading different patterns or colours. The garment would act like a display in the same way as a computer screen.

    The release of these clothing items will soon be followed by the much-sought-after Remote Transparency Crack.

  • Instead of making the clothes smarter, they should try making the people wearing them smarter!
  • Interesting how the only picture they offered a larger view of is the one of the woman wearing the smart-bra... :)
  • Here is my list of tech clothing that I would like to be developed.

    A belt with intragrated wifi, either 2 Gb Flash HD or a 20 to 40 Heavy duty shock proof HD, GPS, and nothing else.

    Undies. I don't really want any tech in my undies thank you very much. Something helpful would be diaper undies that would "monitor" body wastes to tell the health of babies or infirm citizens. They could also be used to "detect" illegal substances ingested.

    Socks... I'd want one sock to regenerate the other sock that's enoug
  • "Philips Labs, at Redhill in Surrey, are currently designing clothes that keep you warm in the cold and cool in the heat by responding to the body's shivering."

    If this thing's responding to the amount that my body is shivering, then I'd have to say if pretty well missed the fucking boat on keeping me "warm".

  • "This technology isn't going to go away. In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing."
    And in the brave new world of cameras embedded in "intimate clothing", you answer your clothingphone only to have the caller say "you dumbass, your underwear is on inside out, and the weather must be really cold ..."
  • Hey at least you don't have to worry about zipping up after a trip to the bathroom... just make sure you're properly tucked in first....yeeeouch. We've all seen There's Somthign about Mary... don't need any "frank and beans" problems.

  • Hmmm, maybe a shirt that could re-direct the "I'm with Stupid [buycoolshirts.com]" arrow to whomever in the room has the lowest IQ ?

    On the practical side... integrate tiny gas detectors - no longer could your buddies disavow foul odors [tacobell.com], or a spouse blame it on the dog !
  • ... is the most hyped technology-nobody-asked-for since Push and Video On Demand.

    ...Sean.

  • ...an airplane dress that changes shape by remote control...

    Well, I can certainly see that being a target for hackers!

  • In 20 or 30 years, computers, telephones, and televisions will become part of our intimate clothing,"

    So now we can display p0rn right ON our undies? What a time saver!

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