Fashion

A few weeks ago, I discovered the wonderful work of Jennifer Crupi while visiting the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design.

Part prosthesis, part fine jewelery, the collection hits a sweet-spot between art, craftsmanship, and critical design.

Ornamental Hands: Figure One (shown worn).  Photo: Christian Luis

The Ornamental Hands series treats the hands themselves as jewels, set in sterling silver in delicate, lady-like positions.  The wearer is trained to daintily bend her thumb or raise her pinky finger – a wonderful juxtaposition between the lady-like gestures and the rigid, surgical qualities of the jewelery.

Ornamental Hands: Figure Three (shown worn).  Photo: Christian Luis

Already an established artist, Jennifer Crupi’s work is well-researched and thoughtfully presented in the exhibition.  Figure Three of the Ornamental Hands series is shown above below being worn.  The photo below is the display stand for the same piece with historical illustrations showing examples of the gesture.  The contrast between the delicate gesture and the hard metal instrument is emphasized and reminds us of the strict social norms that frequently dictate body language.

Ornamental Hands: Figure Three.  Photo: Jennifer Crupi

The whole series examines all kinds of body language, not just hand gestures.  The collection includes full body-jewelery aids and instruments, e.g., the Posture Gauge – Chin which mechanically measures the wearer’s position on a scale between introvert and extrovert.

Posture Gauge Chin: Introverted/Extroverted scale (shown worn). Photo: Anibal Pella

Head on over to Jennifer’s website, www.jennifercrupi.com to see the whole range of work.  Or if you’re in San Francisco before the end of the exhibition on 5 October 2014, be sure to catch Jennifer Crupi: A Display of Gestures at the SF Museum of Craft and Design.

Here’s your chance to enter a wearable tech competition focused on making wearables more fashionable. The projects can be conceptual and it looks all you need are drawings and sketches. 

Deadline: Sept 5, 2014

Details below:

Welcome to the 2014 FashioNXT Wearable Technology Fashion Competition for the most fashionable wearable technology design concept, presented by Digital Trends.

The purpose of this competition is to inspire innovative thinking to go beyond and above making technology wearable to making it fashionable and most importantly worn. Imagine and design what has not been imagined before. Stretch the imagination on all ideas fashionable with no limits or boundaries. Change the status quo on how the world experiences the use of technology through fashion.

Conceptual designs are encouraged to be fashion forward with use of innovative technology design methodologies and proposed materials. Design concepts do not have to be currently feasible. The technology specifications are not part of the competition criteria. The competition’s sole focus is on the fashion forwardness of the conceptual designs and the designs ability to motivate the audience to desire the product concept. 

The finalists and winner will receive recognition of their talent by having their design concepts showcased at the 2014 FashioNXT runway show and receiving national and international press.  A prize package will be awarded to the winner of the most fashionable wearable technology design concept, details below.   

Judging Panel

• Jeremy Kaplan – Editor in Chief, Digital Trends 
• Howard Nuk – Head of Industrial Design, Samsung Design America
• Michelle Lesniak – Fashion designer, winner of Project Runway season 11.
• Eden Dawn – Style Editor, Portland Monthly Magazine
• Russ Stromberg – Account Director, Synapse
• Matt Rhoades – Design Lead, Nike
• Mark Francis – Venture Lead, New Business Initiative, Intel

Prize Package

• $1,000 Cash Prize
• Feature on Digital Trends, The Manual, The Oregonian-Oregonlive and FashioNXT.net
• Showcased at FashioNXT 2014 Runway Show and free exhibit at FashioNXT 2015 Runway Show
• A computer system with Intel’s latest technology, courtesy of Intel Corporation
• Complimentary benefits from Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN)
• One year free membership to Technology Association of Oregon (TAO)

How to Participate   

The Wearable Technology Fashion Competition is open to anyone with fashionable ideas – creatives of all types, students, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, technologists, and visionary thinkers. To Participate, submit the following about your design concept online.  

• 200 Word Description of Functionality
• Conceptual Drawings / Sketches                            
• Optional: One Minute Video

Contestants are required to submit their design concept by September 5, 2014. Three finalists will be determined by industry experts and announced on September 15. The finalists will have their designs showcased at the FashioNXT Runway Show on October 9, 2014 in Portland, Oregon at which one contestant will emerge as the winner of the most fashionable wearable technology design concept. All participants must be 16 or older. Finalists have to cover their own travel cost to FashioNXT.

Judging Criteria

• Fashion Forwardness
• Innovation and Originality of Design
• Functionality of Technology Application   

Mass customization appears to be making a huge come back as companies are streamlining the production and manufacturing of personalized products. Mass customization was a hot topic in the late 90’s, with Nike launching NIKEID, a website that allows you design your own Nike shoes, in 1999. Today it’s not only the big players like Nike and Burberry who are entering into the bespoke goods market. Startups, banking on the fatigue of fashion fashion, are building businesses that allow customers to create personalized, one-of-a-kind products. 

Convival Project is a London-based studio that has created a beautiful IOS App that allows customers to customize the patterns of a scarf. The Generative Scarves app enables the user to customize colors and patterns and create a unique print for an individual scarf that can be ordered online.

Tinker Tailor, founded by Aslaug Magnusdottir, brings bespoke luxury fashion to the masses. Working with designers like Marchesa, customers can customize the hem, pattern, and cut of a dress online. Personalization aspects are limited but too much choice traditionally hasn’t worked well with consumers. 

Other websites to note are Shoes of Prey, Ethreads, and 121time.com.

According to this Mckinsey report, the new wave of mass customization is being driven by a number of factors including interactive product configurators, 3D scanning and printing, and flexible manufacturing systems. 

So why discuss mass customization on a wearable tech blog? The recent and much applauded trend for wearable technology companies has been to engage with the Fashion industry. Wearables are trying to become more fashionable. As I work with companies to try to bring “fashion” to wearable devices, I’ve come to the conclusion that “fashion” or “great product design” may not be the holy grail to getting products adopted by the mainstream. 

Wearables don’t need to just become more fashionable, they must become more personal — both in the user experience and form factor.

Could mass customization become a key to greater adoption of wearable technology? After all, wearable technology is intimate. Our devices need to conform to us — not us conforming to our devices. 

For women, smart jewelry has become the antidote to the bulky, smart watches designed predominately for the male, tech-obsessed market. At least, that appears to be the wearable tech trend for 2014. If historically jewelry was used as a signifier of fertility, wealth and social hierarchy, high tech adornments are aiming to be social identifiers for the powerful, “connected” busy women. Women  whose inboxes and voicemails are so full they need their jewelry to bling and buzz to selectively filter “important” calls and emails. 

Apparently I’m not important enough to be one of those women. 

The use cases for high-tech jewelry unfortunately fall short considering the affordances they currently provide. Most are feeble alert mechanisms for our mobile device attempting to solve the age old problem of people being immersed in glowing screens. Some are marketed as jewelry that keeps you connected while others tout the pleasure of allowing you to “disconnect.” 

Regardless of the utility, one thing is certain: If these high-tech baubles are to subsist after one season, design has to reign. These young companies need to understand the fashion accessories market and the trend-driven competitive landscape — and design and manufacture accordingly — to be considered more than a novelty and a one-season wonder. 

A few should be applauded for bringing a unique voice to their smart jewelry collection because it is indeed new territory — both for jewelry designers and engineers alike.  

Kovert 

“With a strong focus on aesthetics, kovert designs create ‘smart’ designer wearable technology products, by embedding electronic sensors and wireless connections into fashion accessories. kovert empowers you to disconnect. this is about letting your technology take care of itself, so that you can get on with the things that really matter.”

http://kovertdesigns.com

BlueJewelz

“BlueJewelz discretely vibrates when you receive a text message, email or call from one of your VIP contacts. The BlueJewelz Notif disc easily fits into any BlueJewlz-compatible jewelry—available from BlueJewlz and coming soon to participating retailers.”

http://www.bluejewelz.com

Ringly 

Ringly creates beautiful smart jewelry and accessories that keep you effortlessly connected to the things that matter most. Our core belief is that technology can be more discreetly integrated into our lives. Ringly places style and simplicity above all else and our first product line is a collection of rings.

www.ringly.com

Netamo June

JUNE suggests the most appropriate SPF cream for your skin, taking into account the current UV levels. It reminds you when to put your hat and sunglasses on, and when to move into the shade…

You will know exactly when and how to protect yourself to prevent sunburn and premature aging of your skin.

www.netamo.com

Cuff 

The Cuff is a wearable security device that can be attached to jewelry. This technology can be use to locate the user and is equipped with a distress button that will alert other people who are in the user’s Cuff network. The alerts are relayed by a vibrator which is installed inside the Cuff. It will vibrate when other Cuff users press the distress button or another user try to locate the Cuff using their smart phones.

www.cuff.io

Naomi Kizhner‘s critical design work Energy Addicts is a collection of three parasitic jewelery pieces that harvest energy from the wearer’s body.

The E-pulse Conductor harvests electrical pulse energy from the spine. Photo: Shahar Tamir

Designed to start a conversation about how far we are willing to go to fill our need for energy, the pieces are intended to be invasive and provocative.

Blood Bridge attaches to the wearer via two hypodermic needles that allow the blood to flow past a “water wheel” to create power. Photo: Shahar Tamir

The combination of thought-provoking concept, beautiful design and well-crafted execution ticks all the boxes for me.

Blinker harvests energy from blinking eyelids. Photo: Shahar Tamir

Naomi Kizhner’s created the work as part of her graduation project at Jerusalem’s Hadassah College.

Via: Dezeen

Fashion designers have become tech giants’ latest muse as companies like Google, Fitbit, Intel and now HP embrace fashion to transform their latest gadgets into lifestyle products. HP tapped menswear designer Michael Bastian to turn geeky, feature driven smart watches into a covetable, luxury watch. 

Bastian, with a successful track record collaborating with Gant, is known for his New England preppie signature style. From the looks of the early sketches, the smart watch is greatly inspired by automotive design. 

It features a 44-mm stainless steel case, buttons for control (no touch screen) and comes with three interchangeable bands to fit your life style: black rubber for sport; perforated leather for everyday wear and olive green nylon for a more rugged, outdoorsy look. 

As for functionality, the watch is touted, first and foremost, as an elegant timepiece enhanced with “smart” functionality. The watch can provide weather, stock and sport updates in addition to acting as a notifier for your emails, text and social media notifications. 

Bastian’s smart watch is expected to debut this Fall exclusively on flash site Gilt.

Hi, I’d like to introduce our (techno-shugei club JP) recent work “Lazy Plastic Brooch”

We built up my own 3D printer for make things.

as You know, 3D printers sometimes make error print such as glitched images.

We tried to control 3D printer controller system for broken prints stable. and We made brooches with printed plastic.

and We made the Lazy Plastics online shop.

Links

Techno-Shugei Club

Lazy Plastics online shop

Just like fashion, wearable tech is being driven by trends. 2013 was the year of wrist-worn devices while 2014 will be driven by wearables that take the form of jewelry. 

In May, Misfit Wearables launched the  Bloom necklace, a stainless steel pendant to wear the Shine activity tracker. In Janurary at CES, Fitbit announced a collaboration with fashion designer Tory Burch to transform the Fitbit into a fashionable accessory. 

Today we have the launch of Ringly, a Bluetooth ring targeted at women who don’t want to miss a call. Ringly is banking is on fact that smart jewelry will appeal to women more than a smart watch. With the current bulky design of most smart watches, they may be right. 

Ringly is basically an alert mechanism for your calls, texts and emails. You use an app to customize which notifications you want to receive. The ring notifies you via blinking LEDs and vibration patterns. 

The downfall of the device, like most wearable devices, is of course its battery life. It claims to stay charged for 2+ days which isn’t very long. On the positive side, it does come with a custom ring box that doubles as a USB charger. 

The question remains whether the novelty of it all will outweigh the inconvenience of having to charge yet another device every two days, especially for someone on the go as myself.

Hey, if it doesn’t work, at least it serves its primary function — as a lovely piece of jewelry.

The Next Black is a must see documentary on the future of fashion design and manufacturing. Featuring some of the most experimental and disruptive designers, this documentary beautifully gives you a glimpse into future techno-ateliers.

Enjoy!

Dan Roosegaarde’s latest, and perhaps most ambitious project to date, is to build “smog-free parks” in Beijing that harvest smog particles from the environment. The particles extracted from the Beijing city air will be transformed into stones set in precious jewelry. 

The black dust captured in the ring symbolically will represent a cubic kilometer of cleaned air. 

Currently in the concept phase, the ring will contain a clear stone with the black dust particles embedded in the center. The rings are not only socio-eco-political statements but their sales will help fund the development of more “smog-free parks.”

The question remains how sustainable can the development of the these “smog-free parks” be and how they too will ultimately contribute to the pollution.

via NY Times.