musings on sartorial fashion

how could one bring the rate of renewal of clothing fashion up to speed with the turnaround time of more rapidly updating sources of information, such as ones found online?

since wardrobe updates are relatively sleepy compared to constantly changing realtime info, i wanted to design some outfits that would attempt to bridge the temporal gap.

some of the garment fabrication setups i was musing:

i was intrigued by veblen's writings regarding the corset. i liked the idea of transforming one's physical body into something 'shapely' through an object very tangible, a fabricated body-modification tool. what if one wore an undergarment such as a corset, which had a moderate resolution of mechanisms that would tighten (strings / elastics), or augment (inflated pieces) one's body at will. as far as input goes, you could look up the real-time body shape of the hottest supermodel / actress / most downloaded person / most downloaded cartoon / fashion figure on the net, and the corset would adjust. another idea was to have a camera embedded, so you can start to resemble the crowd you're in or look like whatever you think is cool in your environment; i.e. if you're in the forest, the corset will make you look very tree-like. the wearer has control of whatever fashionable shape they want to be, humanoid (hourglass, straight, pear-shaped) or not (blob, squarish, asymmetrical).

[vaguely along lines of vincent leclerc's inflatables concept]

a dress / swimsuit made out of photosensitive fabric or paper. (looking up on this; seems like there's UV-sensitive paper widely available; still investigating fabric + paints). it would hang or be draped on a dressform, and real-time blog / news feeds would arrive and be displayed on a projected image that would fall upon the dress. i'm not sure if this will work or not, but i imagine that after about five minutes of exposure from the projection light, the garment will have been exposed to the 'newest' items of interest. depending on the development process (the UV paper needs to be washed in water to set the image), the exposed garment will be developed, and either preserved or destroyed as a new fresh garment starts the process anew. the swimsuit would work well (although a paper one would be interesting...) because once you wear it for swimming, the water would develop it and the garment would 'complete' itself, satifying its role as external and new.

many tickertape machines surrounding the waistline of a dress form / wearer. each one unravels paper, printed with the latest headlines/blogs/topMP3, whatever feed it's programmed to read. as it grows, it resembles a freeform pleated skirt. the paper can be cut or torn off when a number of new items comes barreling through, leaving rubbish in its wake upon the floor. another variation is to have it print a train/trailing skirt out the back which, as it accumulates information, creates a bustle (info is 'bubbling' up) once it's at an uncomfortably long length.

threadless.com is a popular tshirt store which has regular design updates. the shirt designs are submitted and voted upon by internet users, and then sold. it would be interesting to have a portable printer mounted on the back or front of a thick shirt / jacket, and print out the latest threadless design once it's public. the site has about 4 new designs per week, so the output could be randomized among them.

if these things above existed, would 'style channels' be the thing? would you dial up into the 'beverly hills trend' feed or the 'rave culture trend' feed? do you have to subscribe, or pay some sort of membership fee to do so?

i'm aware of nancy paterson's stock market dress, and perhaps some inflatable suits and space-shaping garments...

i'm wondering if it would be acceptable if i did mostly a paper outlining the design and conceptual motivation of these fast-fashion outfits for signals class, and then actually implemented one of the prototypes for prof. maes' ambient intelligence class. a project such as adaptable / dynamic clothing or accessories would be suitable for her class.