Texile Innovations

VitalJacket by Biodevices monitors your heartbeat

Some time ago I went to the texprocess in Frankfurt, and only today got around to looking up the companies I had noted. The trade fair was amazing, and all the things my google searches put me on are fascinating, so I thought I'd compile them here!

The absolutely most interesting group I found was the Swedish group Smart Textiles, who work on mind-blowing research. I had to laugh when I read this quote on their website: “Electrically conductive fibers, interactive textiles, textile integrated medical electronics, textile acoustics, phase-change fibers, textile photonics. Taste the words; these are some of the research areas at Technology Lab.” What they do is super funky, though. Textile blood vessels? Technology is amazing. http://smarttextiles.se/en/

They also have a magazine, and if you click on only ONE link in this post, it should be this one. The entire magazine, packed with utterly mind-boggling work, in English, for free online. Seriously, it's more than worth the read. https://issuu.com/piffling/docs/stm2_eng_1


Moving on to other groups, here's one with heating, conductors, sensors, lights… http://www.frti.ch/en/technology/illuminated-textiles.html

Matrix Infusion Coating in particular is just so cool: http://www.outlast.com/en/applications/

“Research in anti-microbial textiles (…) has led to the development of bioprotective clothing materials(…). Biocidal functions can be divided into sterilization, disinfection, and sanitization in an order of the strength of the function. Biocidal functions for personal protection should be at least at the disinfection level, which can inactivate most infectious microorganisms.” (Links here and here.)
This is mainly for medicinal wear, but how cool would this be on winter gloves or protective face coverings??

Eco filament yarns: http://www.chainlon.com.tw/english/product/brand.php?dpid=10

You can’t tell me this isn’t adorable. http://www.chinareflective.com/product/SAFETY-RAINCOAT_CSW-009.html

Flame-resistant fabric is badass: http://pyro-tex.de/the-fiber/

http://organoclick.com/ develops non-toxic and sustainable methods for the textile and nonwoven (wood, etc) industry, particularly water-repellant coatings, fabric stiffeners and original fibers.

Suuuuuper cool is the Hövding helmet, which is a neck brace that inflates (much like a car’s airbag) into a protective helmet! It’s amazing; check this out: https://hovding.com/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikYFfxpu3I0

Not really textile-related since it dissolves in water, electric paint is still really neat. It can be used on a variety of surfaces, including skin, to create electric circuits. https://www.bareconductive.com/

LFLECT does neat things with reflective fibers: https://lflect.com/collections/LFLECT

Then there’s this strange and intriguing art/fashion concept of using the wearer’s movement to generate electric energy, which then powers a function of the garment. The hooded dress plays calming sounds near the wearer’s ears when the grotesquely exaggerated back is touched, fidgeting with the rope-like scarves causes one to light up, and pulling at the strap harness illuminates the pockets of the dress. Rather bizarre, but interesting. http://www.captain-electric.net/site/dresses.php

Biodevices’ VitalJacket is a wearable cardiomonitor, and not only is it a great medical device (since it easily monitors the wearer’s heart condition over hours, in a comfortable way), it’s also pretty gorgeous. Here’s the website, and an image of the shirt is above. http://www.vitaljacket.com/?page_id=156

For an even greater medical innovation, check out Mollii, the elektrodress that helps people with spasticity (cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury and other disabilities). It looks comfortable, the feedback seems to have been overwhelmingly good, and a few hours of wear help with motor functions for days! http://inerventions.se/en/

You've likely heard of fabric spray, but in case you somehow missed it: http://www.fabricanltd.com/

I would love for thermochromic (temperature sensitive) paint to be developed for stove tops, so that you can see at a glance what temperature the surface has. It seems you can get thermochromic strips (here), but I haven’t found anything about thermochromically coated appliances or dishes so far. And if you haven’t seen this table (and the comments about it), you’re missing out!

Very much worth checking out are the INDEX design award finalists 2017: http://designtoimprovelife.dk/category/award2017/
They don’t, in general, have much textile or fashion innovation, but SO many amazing projects and technological advances.

Then there's auxetic textiles, which stretch in fascinating and highly artistic ways: https://youtu.be/j6iDcIYTqNQ

And that’s it for the day! With all this new stuff going on, I wonder how long it’ll take for someone to create electricity-conductive tattoos and embed LEDs into their skin to make them light up. Between 3D printed organs, textile veins, electric generators in our own clothing and fabrics that dissolve at the touch of water, I feel like I live in a sci-fi world already.

Colors of the World

Hey there! So I've had a project in the works that I debuted on Monday: Colors of the World! It's an artistic project exploring different cultures around the world, looking at traditional arts, textiles, patterns, culture, language and much more. Each month I'll be working on a new culture or country, posting a photoshoot at the beginning of each month and following it up with blog posts over on the website, so check it out! It's in its beginning stages still, but by the end of the month there'll be something of interest for everyone, and I'd love to have your feedback and support! Here's the LINK, and a sneak peak...

Saris

I find myself mildly obsessed with the sari, an South Asian draped garment. Basically a glorified strip of cloth, the sari is wrapped around the body and draped until it hangs elegantly, the fabric often dyed in vibrant colors and embroidered in intricate patterns.

This mild obsession started when I came across the below image of a sari paired with a corset (which I can assure you is not the traditional way to wear a sari), and I was struck by the figure the model cut.

From there it took off and I scoured the internet for further images, happening across the website Shree Designer Saree and flipping through their catalogue and saving my favorite images. Something I find rather amusing is that they will describe the different saris with different adjectives: Keen, insightful, beneficial, savoury, miraculous, transcendent, amuse... Not sure how those describe the saris (I was particularly amused by "pathetic"), but have a look!

 

Despite the vibrant beauty of the above images, however, I find myself wishing I could try a sari-and-corset combo in the style of Zessinna - it looks so striking!

 

 

T-shirt Prints

For my brother's Birthday I tossed together some t-shirt prints I thought he'd enjoy - for the last one I used his favorite line from the Monty Python dead parrot skit. They're all concepts I found online and liked, but while I pretty much recreated the first two I made the last one in my own style. Now he just has to buy himself some t-shirts (best if he finds ones he likes) and iron these prints on!

Abandoned Warehouse Photoshoot

Taking advantage of the Schoch Areal in Stuttgart Feuerbach while it remains standing, my friend Criss and I did a quick photoshoot for which I put together several articles of clothing. I'm so happy with the way it all turned out - outfits, setting, and photos, it all looks wonderful! Criss got some really beautiful shots of me, too, which is always appreciated. Here's a sneak peek - check out the full photos on my Behance!

Convertible Shoes

If I had roughly $2,000 to blow, I'd be tempted by these:

Found at tanyaheathcanada.com, these shoes have removable heels and a large selection of styles and colors to choose from - my favorite of each style being these below.

Christophe, the 4 1/2 cm trotter heel

Denis, the 8 1/2 cm "boot maker's" heel

Francois, the 8 1/2 stiletto heel

and Stephane, the 6 cm kitten heel.

There aren't quite as many styles of shoes to choose from as there are for the heels, but the option of having heels of different heights and styles with the same, (hopefully) comfortable shoes is very appealing. Buying both shoes shown above and the four chosen heels would come to exactly $1,785 - rather more than I'm willing to spend on shoes! But it is very nice to see this idea elaborated in such an elegant way. Other interesting shoes are these by Daniela Bekerman, German brand Nat-2, and Llynda More Boots, each below.

Ze o ze ("this or that") by Daniela Bekerman

Sandal sneakers by Nat-2

Interchangeable tops for sneakers by Nat-2

Versatile tops for boots by Llynda More Boots

As you can see, there are already interesting options out there! I love the concept of easy changes to shoes - it's the reason why I've always found spats so interesting. Fun stuff!

Bindi

Today I was reading up a bit on the bindi and tilaka, two forehead markings that characterize, but are not limited to, Hinduism.

The red dot on this lady's forehead is a bindi, a decoration worn in South and Southeast Asia.

I got onto this topic when reading about Indian widows celebrating Holi, the festival of colors. The topic matter is both saddening and horrifying (as apparently in some places widows are cast out and shunned after the deaths of their husbands), but I found myself intrigued by the markings on their foreheads. I knew about the bindi, of course, but the long, silver or gold markings surprised me. (To see the photos, click on the link - both the text and photos are worth a few minutes!)

Looking into it a bit, I found that the markings must be what is called tilaka, and presumably they only applied the color for the festival, though it's also possible that they wear it on a daily basis. The different styles of tilaka (or sect-markings) are quite neat, and though I didn't recognize any of the markings below on the photos, here are an assortment of tilaka styles as found on wikipedia:

While I could not quite figure out the origin or meaning behind the tilaka, the placement of both it and the bindi on the forehead is due to the sixth chakra, ajna, being positioned there. As such, the bindi represents the third eye.

Interesting, no? If anyone knows more about this, I'd love to hear about it! Comments are welcome.

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

AKA "My time in the Perceiving Systems department". It's a bit hard to define the job I did for over a year, but basically, I created virtual clothing to dress 3D scans of real people, working with fabric properties, animation sequences, and more. I also worked with several scanner systems, most notably the newest room-sized scanning systems by 3dMD, and collaborated with several researchers on their projects involving the digital study of the human body.

The Perceiving Systems department works in the field of Computer Vision, trying to "enable computers to understand the visual world of surfaces, materials, light and movement". Check out the About page here!

I mainly worked together with the researchers interested in the virtual representation of humans, helping to develop a more advanced version of a previous project titled DRAPE: Dressing Any Person. My main task was to create a large variety of clothing in a variety of sizes suitable to dress nearly any human adult. (Discounting physical disabilities or very extreme height differences; clothing to fit such sizes is easier changed by other digital means than a rigid grading of a pattern.)

This is a screenshot of OptiTex, the program I used to create the digital patterns. Pictured is a dress shirt, dressed on a male model (not a scan, but a digitally generated mesh).

So I'd have a 3D model of a person, dress it, run animations (often recorded in our Vicon system), save meshes, etc. I created a large variety of patterns, but will stick to basic patterns for this blog post to illustrate the job, rather than my creative abilities. (I may post more creative designs another time!)

In OptiTex I could change fabric parameters (affecting the draping and body of the garment), run custom animation sequences, and all sorts of other nifty things. Tons of fun! (Lots of work, too, but hey, who says work can't be play?) I'd love to upload a video sequence here, but unfortunately they're all too big. I can, however, share a video of a capture we did in the Vicon system - I'm pictured doing some stretches dressed in a velcro-fabric suit to which we stuck the Vicon markers. The system only captures the movement of the little silver markers, ignoring everything else, and the resulting "figure" can be applied to any 3D model, letting any model recreate my movements.

Fun! That capture session was such a great experience. My favorite photo of it is still this one below - I look so relaxed and happy~

But back to the original topic. So I'd have, for example, a 3D scan of myself, which I could dress in an outfit and run an animation with the clothing following my movements mostly realistically. The results would be passed on to my colleagues for their projects, and often I would find myself saving generated meshes of the same pattern on dozens of different bodies for comparison purposes. Someday we may see a new and improved version of DRAPE due to my work on this project! Probably not for another year, though - I mainly did the preliminary work of establishing a catalogue of garments for use, and now it needs to come together with a new type of body model, manner of representing cloth in the digital space, and many other considerations besides. When it does happen, however, I'll be able to say that I was a coauthor on a scientific publication - how cool is that?

And there we go - just about the most concise summary of my former job I can come up with. As a fashion designer by trade, this job enabled me to work in a more abstract way than the purely physical training I received, and it was a challenging, variable, and fun job. I learned a lot not only about Computer-Aided Design and scanning systems, but arguably more important things such as working in a team, getting tasks done properly and on time, and staying organized. I couldn't have had a better experience at my first place of employment!

If anything's unclear or there are details you'd like to know, drop me a comment - I'd love to hear from you!

Scribbles from Work

Until recently I worked at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Sytems, in the Perceiving Systems department (I even happen to be in four images on the home page!). My main task was to create digital clothing, which was both challenging and fun! I hope to post some of my work soon, but today I wanted to share some of the notes I took while there.

I always kept blank A4 pages on my desk (slipped partway under my keyboard, in fact, so that they were right in front of my eyes) to jot down measurements and other notes while working on designs. Occasionally I would also add a small drawing - typically while waiting for OptiTex (the software I used) to drape the pattern I was working on, or while an animation was running.

So my typical paper would look like the ones below: Covered in numbers, song titles I liked (mainly kpop, though I see some song lyrics from Lacuna Coil there), and little sketches. Often I would fill one side of the paper, then turn it so that the covered side was under my keyboard and I'd have a blank space to use - so these have upside-down drawings and notes as well! Sometimes I'd even use the back of the paper. No point in wasting perfectly good white space!

But yes, as you can see: song lyrics and titles, measurements, scribbles, checklist...

Some bow drawings...

Some Disney-inspired princess dresses... Hey, my job was nothing if not variable!

...And there are many other, similar papers. Ah, good times!

Welcome To My Blog!

Having just finished my job at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, I decided to take some time to work on all the ideas I didn't have the time for while employed, as well as brush up on some creative skills that need polishing. So, for the next few months, I hope to post on this blog once a day on a variety of subjects as I work on my projects! The main two topics are art and fashion, but I also want to work on my language skills (particularly Russian and Korean), read those books and watch the movies that I really should have seen by now (I'm getting very tired of telling people, "Oh, I've heard it's very good! No, I'm afraid I've never seen/read it,"), and educate myself on assorted things like history, politics, and philosophy.

Each different topic will have its own tab at the top of the blog, and topics such as history and literature will fall under 'culture', with special tabs reserved for art projects, fashion projects, and languages. 'personal' will be reserved for announcements, special posts, and the like, and 'featured' is where posts about other artists, shops and more will end up.

If you like, you can get email notifications for posts by entering your email address into the "Follow by Email" box at the top of the page, right under the "About Me" section. --->
That said, let's get right to it!

Cheers,
SOPHIE