Creation of illuminative smart fashion

Abstract

As wearable technology becomes more common, it is changing our concept of human subjectivity, creating new concepts of identity, new systems of behaviour and extensions of the body itself. What is more, contemporary fashion has been playing an important role in enhancing socio-cultural communications between different people; this practice-based research study combined the theories of wearable technologies, practical concept development and physical prototyping of wearable technologies in creating high value fashion design. In this study, the aim is to combine artistic creativity, scientific rationales and principles, as well as engineering technical-know-how to design and develop high value fashion prototypes namely, "Illuminative Smart Fashion" that are able to sense and react to the changing environment by means of visual communications. The specific objectives are as follows: a) to investigate the latest illuminative fashion products in the market and those applications in visual expressions; b) to identify the technologies that helped to realise a conceptual experience involving wearable technologies, especially the technology of illumination, the application of various sensors, wireless communication devices that could be integrated into fashion, and the specific circuit layout designs suitable for fashionable garments; c) to develop the theoretical design process model of illuminative smart fashion; d) to create and assess different mock-up prototypes that could assist in illustrating the design concept; e) to finalise a detail design with specifications for "Illuminative Smart Fashion" prototypes; and f) to create high value illuminative smart fashion prototypes by means of visual communications that could present various visual expression regarding the changing environment. This research study is practice-based in nature and the research design has been divided into five major stages namely, the "research stage", "development of theoretical framework", "creation of initial prototypes", "evaluation stage", and "design stage", in order to create the high value illuminative smart fashion prototypes. Finally, a pair of fashion prototypes that are able to react and present various visual communications regarding the changing environment factors was finally created. Interactions between both prototypes, due to the changes of proximity, sound, heat, humidity and pressure were well demonstrated.