Is fashion the new campaign for clean air? Can clothing and textiles be used as catalytic surface to purify air? It seems so...
Catalytic Clothing is the brainchild of the artist/designer Helen Storey (London College of Fashion) and University of Sheffield chemist Tony Ryan. Two people from very different worlds whose minds have come together over the recent years in highly successful art and science collaborations.
The venture, entitled Catalytic Clothing, is asking the public to join the campaign for clean air.
A dress that absorbs polluted city air and purifies it.
Model: Erin O'Connor Music: Radiohead
We have the opportunity, at this early stage, to shape the technology that has the potential to transform our lives.
Winter is coming almost to an end but it's still really cold. Coats, jackets, pants and skirts or dresses worn with tights keep us warm. You can find tights in a range of colour, prints, composition, transparent or not. But there is always one tiny problem...they don't stay in place, fall down and can easily be ruined.
The other day at school, my dear friend Margarita got really frustrated with her... tights! She wore a beautiful pair (blue with black dots) but they kept falling down and she kept pulling them up.
Have you ever been out on a date or with your friends, wearing tights, feeling and looking gorgeous and end up with a hole in them? Well i have, many times, come home looking like i've got into a cat fight!
Dr. Manel Torres joined forces with other scientists at Imperial College London to invent the spray, which forms a seamless fabric on contact with the body.
The spray consists of short fibres that are mixed into a solvent, allowing it to be sprayed from a can or high-pressure spray gun. The fibres are mixed with polymers that bind them together to form a fabric. The texture of the fabric can be varied by using wool, linen or acrylic fibres.
The fabric, which dries when it meets the skin, is very cold when it is sprayed on, a limitation that may frustrate hopes for spray-on trousers and other garments.
But how about tights? Imagine having a small spray bottle in your bag, and create and instant pair of tights on your legs, that can be de-solved and reused. Of course its just an idea and it can only be used for opaque tights but wouldn't it be great?
Well, another typical rainy day here in Thessaloniki. Just got home, soaked in water since i didn't carry an umbrella...
These days make you wish you had future technology clothing in your wardrobe. And especially nanotechnology hydrophobic clothes and shoes. Olympic games swim athletes, wear swimsuits named fastskin(speedo swimwear) made of material that absorbs a lot less water and in that way water resistance is being reduced, thus making them go faster. But how about a material that never gets wet? Stefan Seeger, lead researcher at the University of Zurich in 2008 presented a fabric made from polyester fibres coated with millions of tiny silicone filaments, and is the most water-repellent clothing-appropriate material ever created.
image by University of Zurich (Wiley Vch)
"The combination of the hydrophobic surface, chemistry and the nanostructure of the coating, results in the super-hydrophobic effect" Seeger explained to New Scientist magazine. "The water comes to rest on the top of the nanofilaments like a fakir sitting on a bed of nails".
Another invention based on nanotechnology and has to do with hydrophobic ability comes in the form of...a spray bottle! The following product makes surfaces hydrophobic. I would recommend to turn off the sound (trust me, the music is very annoying!) but the examples shown are very impressive!
Clothes, accessories, shoes that stay dry and clean. Don't need to be washed because they don't get dirty.
If i put my raincoat underwater to soak for two months eventually it would be wet. The uses are limitless but the result is only one. A surface, a fabric, shoes, clothes that never get wet or dirty!
Last year i read an article on the web version of "The Telegraph", that mentioned scientists have developed a prototype "invisibility cloak", similar to those worn by fictional wizard Harry Potter.
I found a lot of papers and researches from different scientists and universities around the world. These are the ones that i find more worth mentioning.I don't pretend to know anything about all this science involved but it goes something like this. People and objects reflect light and that light makes us visible. According to American scientists a combination of materials re-direct that light making it difficult for a man or an object to be seen.Japanese scientists take it one step forward and use reflective projection technology using a computer, a video camera and a projector that shows background images onto the front (something like the Apple ipad app "rubbing away your ipad screen"). An amazing fabric made of glass beads that can reflect light back to the source.
Scientists at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have developed "smart flexible materials" named meta-flex that are made of tiny meta-atoms, which are engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials.
A meta-flex membrane placed on a disposable contact lens and illuminated with office light
These interact with visible light, changing the way the eye perceives an object by reducing its reflection and shadow.The researchers believe that the discovery could pave the way for the creation of "invisible" clothing. Previous studies involving the development of such clothing have been funded by military groups.
The inventions that had been engineered until now involving invisibility, could only exist on flat, hard surfaces rather than flexible ones. The Scottish researchers were able to develop a way of separating the atoms from the hard surfaces, allowing them to be used in creating flexible products like fabric.
The research was published in November's 2010 issue of New Journal of Physics.
Breaking News: The latest issue of New Journal of Physics(January 2012)published a new paper about this subject. Researchers in the US have, for the first time, cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space.
So, a lot of scientists are interested in making an "invisible cloak", that's for sure! And i think, a lot of us have wished at least once in our lives to be invisible...be patient my friends...it seems the much-talked-about invisibility clothing is coming one step closer to reality.
Fiorenzo Omenetto is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and leads the laboratory for Ultrafast Nonlinear Optics and Biophotonics at Tufts University and also holds an appointment in the Department of Physics. His latest research has to do with working on high-tech applications for silk.
In this case, science redefines the use of silk. A material that goes back to ancient China.
Isn't it great to see beyond its common use in fashion? And that is, making silk fabrics.
Consider the alternative uses. The discoveries of this science research are amazing. Medicine, industrial design etc. And it is eco-friendly.
But let's focus in fashion. The idea of making led tattoos out of silk or how silk fibres can be combined with other materials and produce holograms through a beam of light are very interesting. A material with great potential. I am sure future fashion industry would love to work with it. Don't you?
In a few days, in February 9th to be precise, Star Wars Episode 1 "Phantom Menace" is being re-released in 3D. For those who have no idea what i'm talking about - well, you are reading the wrong blog (just kidding).
Due to this 3D release of Star Wars, came to my mind the scene from episode IV (1977) where princess Leia sends her message appearing as a hologram...
...and i can't help myself also thinking of Alexander McQueen's 2006 fashion show where Kate Moss' life-size hologram is floating in front of the eyes of an astounded audience.
Holography is a technique that dates from 1947, but the thing that amazes me the most is the way an artist (in this case a "fashion artist" like Alexander McQueen) made use of it to present this piece of art. A great combination of fashion, creativity and technology.
