A new research headed by Prof Joanna Berzowska from the Concordia University’s Department of Design and Computation Arts brings the future of fashion into focus by taking a closer look at the next quantum leap in textile design – computerized fabrics that change their color and shape in response to movement.
The Shoulder Dress embodies the complexity of the design process when designing for active fibers. The collection shows garments in their multiple stages, low and high energy, enabled by future fibers and transformative textiles (© Ronald Borshan)
“Our goal is to create garments that can transform in complex and surprising ways – far beyond reversible jackets, or shirts that change color in response to heat,” Prof Berzowska explained.
Prof Berzowska’s team has developed interactive electronic fabrics that harness power directly from the human body, store that energy, and then use it to change the garments’ visual properties.
The major innovation is the ability to embed these electronic or computer functions within the fiber itself: rather than being attached to the textile, the electronic components are woven into these new composite fibers. The fibers consist of multiple layers of polymers, which, when stretched and drawn out to a small diameter, begin to interact with each other.
The Acrobat Dress is a transformative garment from a speculative collection of dresses known as Karma Chameleon, created by Concordia University’s Prof Joanna Berzowska (© Ronald Borshan)
Although it’s not yet possible to manufacture clothing with the new composite fibers, Prof Berzowska worked with fashion designers to create conceptual prototypes that can help us visualize how such clothing might look and behave.
“We won’t see such garments in stores for another 20 or 30 years, but the practical and creative possibilities are exciting,” she said. “Imagine a dress that changes shape and color on its own, or a shirt that can capture the energy from human movement and use it to charge an iPhone.”
There would also be a performative aspect to wearing such garments, whose dramatic transformations may or may not be controlled by the wearer. This research raises interesting questions about human behavior relative to fashion and computers. What would it mean to wear a piece of clothing with ‘a mind of its own,’ that cannot be consciously controlled? How much intimate contact with computers do we really want?
Prof Berzowska details the research in an article in The Fashion Studies Handbook, forthcoming from Berg Publishers.
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Bibliographic information: Joanna Berzowska. 2013. “XS Labs: electronic textiles and reactive garments as socio-cultural interventions.” The Handbook of Fashion Studies (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic
