Check out the fashion industry’s newest form of wearable technology—a gorgeous flowing fabric that reacts to heat, sound, and friction. When sensing a change in the wearer’s environment, the fabric will change color immediately, making it both a stunning fashion choice and an interesting bit of chemical tech.
The fabric was created by the material studio THE UNSEEN, by UK artist Lauren Bowker. Bowker’s material, which debuted at the 2014 London Fashion Week, is imbued with a mixture of biological and chemical technology which allows it to respond to changes in the environment. Her fabric is integrated with specialized ink that reacts to seven separate fluctuations in the air around us.
The fabric will change color in response to seven different factors in the nearby air: UV rays, heat, pollution, moisture, friction, sound, and chemicals. The ink is a combination of nano-compounds and dyes, who react to these seven fluctuations in set ways: in response to pollution, the fabric will change between yellow and black.
The fabric or ink’s reaction to these stimuli could prove to have interesting real-world applications: your future clothing could alert you when you enter an area of high pollution, for instance, or allow wearers to monitor temperature changes or how much UV they’ve gotten on a sunny day.
The material’s webpage describes it as “reminiscent of an insect’s iridescent exoskeleton,” given its wide range of jewel-toned, glittering colors. THE UNSEEN used the special fabric to create a small clothing collection for Swarovski, which is called Air.
Source Discovery
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