materiality

the main idea i've been thinking about is how to design ways in which people could control their physical presentation through clothes which would better reflect the rapid rate of newly acquired knowledge.

there are lots of features of clothing that define a current fashion, such as form, decoration, style/genre, etc. the projects in the previous posting were more of the real-time-data decoration theme, but here are some other proposals that would incorporate more of the material, textile form.

the whole personal fabrication thing could faciliate more rapid renewals of the physical. a scenario might be that aspiring designers and established clothing firms alike might have patterns posted blog-style, efficiently updated, downloaded, and distributed, in which members (who may have to pay a subscription fee to get the latest update or most popular) could CAD/CAM out to a laser cutter, which would cut all the pieces in the fabric itself. then the pieces could be assembled, piece-wise, with a welder... or possibly, correct sizes of fabric adhesive could be cut out as well, and then the garment assembled step-by-step. buttons, jewelry, adornments could be 3d-printed. (it might be neat to have different heel-styles... kitten, stiletto, platform... be able to be 3d-printed and attached to modular shoe stays) although this would take a little crafty time for the wearer, it would be a lot more efficient than shopping. it would be very paper-doll-like, with much more ephemerality, but value in the novelty. the textile could be anything from tyvek to cotton, and the constructed garment mostly focusing on novelty of form.

another arena i mused upon was coloring in cosmetics. going back to the self-lab-idea, it would be interesting if 'this season's colors' could be immediately disseminated, directly into the hands of the wearers. i can imagine setups where there would be base colors and base materials, and then the fashionable color would be spread, pantone-esque, by a formula of how to mix the colors (such as like CMYK). this would be very convenient for simple mixes such as nail polish, but could also work for face/body topicals if the process were easy to use and reliably accurate. you could viably 'mix and print' your makeup color palette for the day. manufacturers could plug for their purity + quality of ingredients and accessories... such that paper and ink companies do now.

inspired by fashionvictims.org (bags that 'bleed' when exposed to excessive cellphone radiation), another idea is clothing that's cheap + plain when bought (like a blank canvas), but which has the capacity to transform dynamically depending on the temporal state. i'm looking into the ink-bleeding technicalities, but a possibility is a plain shirt, for example, that is thinly quilted with ink reservoirs in each sewn pocket. when downloaded the latest trend, select pockets would burst, forming a pattern or decoration onto the shirt. i imagine it like color-bleeding fabric pixels. so one would have stock of these plain, moderate-resolution items that would self-decorate in the latest updated fashionable motif.

i'm also investigating printing ink-jet directly on fabric... this way, one could really have an updated decorated textile design immediately...

another aspect of fashionable clothing is that it's in-style depending on the surrounding context. items that would adapt their style dynamically within changing environments would be cool. my thought example is the omnistyle bag, in which there would be striped sections encompassing the exterior. the fabric would be on little motorized rollers at the end, and so there'd be an outside (visible) and inside (invisible) component of each textile strip. you could have casual vs formal strip atop the streetwear vs classic strip, all tucked into one elemental bag. the resolution would be relatively low (2^[number of stripes]), but the choice of patterns would be great, and the parts would integrate modularly. [i guess this is kind of like reversible accessories, exponentiated.] shown at left is the endless bag from moma.

and somehow i felt that the element of surprise from signal-giver to signal-receiver was partly related to all of this (so one wouldnt wear everything on their sleeve altogether at once for public view)... although it's a little removed from the fashion front. for example, invisible-ink-printed clothes that has the latest electronic music blog items, but outsiders (who cant view it normally) wouldnt necessarily consider one was in style unless in the environment such as a club (w/ UV light, revealing the messages). same thing with a special skirt-- it would have a hidden fashionably designed slip underneath, that becomes visible when a member of the wearer's most intimate circle of friends are in vicinity and a lightbulb radiates within the skirt, illuminating and revealing the hidden layers within, scrim-like.

[any of these things would work for home design as well, i think... rapidly fabricating one's one sofa upholstery, wallpaper, or lampshades in form or decoration would be really spectacular...]