Catalytic Clothing, a collaboration between the London College of Fashion, University of Sheffield, and the University of Ulster, has recently presented the first prototype of a dress that can purportedly absorb airborne pollutants. A thin layer of space-age, pollution-absorbing concrete mixture is sprayed onto the “Herself” dress. Wearing the dress automatically means that you are helping to save the environment, simply by walking around and being fashionable!

However, the “Herself” dress is highly experimental and is only inteded to illustrate – in artistic form – the idea that textiles can help eliminate certain pollutants from the air. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that an actual, wearable version of the dress will be made.

Check out the dress here!

Shoppers visiting Macy’s Herald Square store in New York through November of this year are in for a surprise! Macy’s and LBi have re-invented the dressing room experience by using augmented reality, app technology and social media.

The dressing booths are equipped with a 72-inch multi-touch mirror and an iPad. The customer selects clothing from the iPad application and transfers the items on their body’s image on the mirror. And there’s more! While shopping, customers can easily upload photos of themselves in their new outfits to social networking sites (using e-mails or SMS). This allows them to get live feedback from their friends with a flick of the wrist.

Want to know more? Read the full article at http://www.psfk.com/2010/10/macys-rethinks-the-fitting-room-experience.html

Kobi Levi is an Israeli designer who specializes in unusual footwear that blurs the line between fashion and art. On his weblog you can find the most extravagant footwear designs, ranging from sling-shot shoes to banana slippers. “The shoe is my canvas”, Levi claims on his weblog. “The piece is a wearable sculpture. It is “alive” with/out the foot/body.” Levi gets his inspiration out of the “shoe-world” and gives the footwear an extreme make-over. All of Levi’s shoes are hand-made in his studio and the challenging technical development is the key to bring the designs to life in the best possible way way.

Check out the remarkable footwear of Kobi Levi here.

Some years ago, Fabrican created an instant, sprayable, non-woven fabric and was developed further through a collaboration between Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, London (UK). When spraying the liquid onto your body, the liquid transforms into fabric. Each spray can sends thousands of cotton fibers splattering against your skin. The fibers then bend together and form a garment that peels away when you undress (so washing your clothes is no longer needed). Since the fibres are delivered in a diffused form, other elements, like perfumes, pigments or treatments, can be easily added.

Source: NextNature ; We make money not art

At the  National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, one specific presentation of MIT stole the show. The central idea, that got a lot of attention, is using a virus to develop hi-tech batteries that could be woven into clothing. It is harmless to humans and can be engineered as a bio-template to produce lithium ion batteries which could be made into clothing like military uniforms. In this way several portable devices such as smart phones, GPS units and handheld radios can be easily powered.

Source: PSFK

At the University of California San Diego, researches have developed biomedical tracking sensors that can be printed directly onto clothing. This technology is able to monitor the blood pressure and heart rate of patients by just wearing the clothes.

Source: PSFK