Burda Style For people who sew

Hi, I’m Jenny Chowdhury, a researcher in wearable and physical

with BurdaStyle!

Love and Circuits at the Seamless Computational Couture Show.

I’ve recently returned from a trip to Boston where I showed a piece at the Seamless Computational Couture Show, at the Boston Museum of Science. Now in its third year, Seamless is a fashion event featuring interactive clothing and technology based fashions that aim to inspire discussion and provoke thought about the future of apparel, technology and the line where the two meet. While the show was not specifically geared to the topic of love, many of the projects appeal to this topic and as it is February, will be explained in the framework of love.

Sisterly-Love: Party Dress

Dana and Karla Karwas, two sisters, who also happen to be architects, created the ingenious Party Dress, a garment that was created to adorn and interweave the bodies of 5 female party-goers. The resulting look is what you’d imagine if you thought about a group of bridesmaids converging into a single entity. A piece of living architecture, the dress transforms when the womens’ bustles are untied, the models are elevated on ladders and the shared skirt of their five dresses becomes an inhabitable structure. After the runway portion of the show, Seamless attendees conversed under the tent that folds of the dress provided.

Musical-Love: OK2Touch

By Jay Silver and Jody Finch, OK2TOUCH is musical instrument that is integrated into a jacket. In order to complete the circuit and make a musical tone, someone must touch the jacket wearer’s skin and a conductive pad on the jacket at the same time. The jacket, thus, invites playful touching between the wearer and a friend. I gladly engaged in the intimacy of hand holding with stranger who was modeling the jacket to see test it out.

It really was very playful and inviting. It seems that that creators met their goal stated in their project’s namesake.

Self-Love: Vanity Ring

Markus Kison fabricated the Vanity Ring, which displays the number of hits found when the name of the person wearing it is googles. Thus, one can display to the world how popular they are. It’s logical update in the idea of using jewelry to show status symbol. The piece was modeled by Manny Delcarmen, a relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, much to the delight of the largely Bostonian audience.

Forbidden-Love: Charming Burka

Also by Markus Kison, the Charming Burka is a garment that is both subversive yet practical. The Charming Burka sends a self-defined picture of the person under the burka to every mobile phone nearby via bluetooth. According to Kison, the woman is thus able to show herself without violating the laws of the Koran. As Kission says, “The virtual appeals can not be gathered by the laws of the Koran and so the Charming Burka fulfills the desire of living a more western life, which some Muslim women have today.”

There are many more fantastic projects from Seamless that you should check out. Make sure you visit the Seamless website. There are also amazing photographs of the event by Eddric Lee posted on his flickr account.