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Wonder-Wear (Smart / Dynamic / Adaptive / Etc. Fabrics & Attire)

GodzillaGirl

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I can never seem to properly post a web address, so here is the story:
Clothing with dietary supplements a big hit

TOKYO — Japanese fabric and clothing makers are fiercely competing in the sale of T-shirts and other clothes containing popular dietary supplements.

Nutritive substances including amino acids, vitamins, xylitol and food additives are gaining the spotlight as ingredients in clothing.

People who wear garments containing such supplements are said to be able to maintain the PH balance in their skin or obtain cool comfort after perspiring.

Clothing makers have high expectations for nutritive substances that they believe will become highly promising revenue sources.

But a major department store official said it is difficult to understand the effect of the supplements in clothing.

Major sporting goods maker Mizuno Corp and Ajinomoto Co jointly developed the clothing material "Amino Veil" last year by combing an amino acid into fabric. They put tennis and golf clothes as well as T-shirts made with the fabric on sale in earnest in March.

They used mainly "arginine," made from about 20 kinds of amino acids, because it is said to help regenerate skin.

"It dissolves when someone perspires and enhances the material's ability to absorb moisture and helped keep the skin's PH level balanced," said a Mizuno public relations department official.

He said Mizuno plans to post 3 billion yen in sales of goods related to Amino Veil five years from now, or about six times the amount projected for the current fiscal year, adding that "sales are going almost according to our plans."

Jeans maker Teijin Wow Co of Osaka is selling "Wow Amino Jean" for women. The jeans incorporate amino acid in the material.

An official of the company said the jeans look no different than other jeans.

But "you get a soft sense when you touch them," the official said. "You don't feel the knee parts of the pants thrust out when you ride a bicycle or climb stairs."

Xylitol, used to sweeten chewing gum and candy, absorbs heat when it comes into contact with water.

Major sportswear maker Yonex Co marketed its "Very COOL" brand clothing, which incorporates xylitol, last year. It said the clothing is most effective for people playing sports under the sun or for a long time.

Fuji Spinning Co has developed a method to integrate ingredients such as caffeine and seaweed essence into fabrics in a stable form, preventing them from dissolving when the fabrics are washed.

Fuji Spinning officials said it is believed people wearing clothing made from the fabric could absorb the ingredients through their skin, but cautioned wearing the clothing could not function as an alternative to nutrition in food.

Makers said they will keep the price of supplement-enhanced clothing at the level of regular clothing. But they said they hope new products will become a source of profits in the future as sportswear is priced higher than ordinary clothing and brings high profit ratios.

Ajinomoto has been supplying amino acids to other companies and is active in research into using the substances in areas other than foodstuffs.

"The volume of supply to nonfood areas has been growing by more than 10% a year over the past several years," an official of the company's public relations department said.

"The amount of supply to the clothing area is still small but will grow considerably in the future." (Kyodo News)

japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=509
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
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One of the characters in The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy had a towel that had been infused with nutrient solution to provide sustinence.

IIRC it also had traces of BarBQ sauce.
 
This is genuinely odd (and the picture accompanying the article didn't help convince me otherwise):

Frock'n'roll

Alyce Santoro's Fish-shaman Rhythm Dress, "made especially for my friend, Phish percussionist Jon Fishman" made its stage debut in Las Vegas recently. "The dress fabric is made from audiotape recorded with Jon's favourite music, and specialised tape-head gloves are used to 'play' the dress on stage." But if you would look as silly as Jon Fishman in a dress, how about a 0 Tell-Tail Thangkas (a sort of Tibetan prayer flag)? The sonic fabric has "ambient nature sounds, urban noises, and improvisational music recorded on to it".

http://www.alycesantoro.com

More details on Alyce Santoro's site with pictures of the dress and Thangkas.

The relevant links to pages on Alyce Santoro's website are dead. The version / content of her site as of the 2004 timeframe of this original post can be accessed (minus most all the images) at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040518214804/http://www.alycesantoro.com/

Her Sonic Fabric website is also apparently MIA nowadays. The text (though not the images) can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040607034115/http://www.sonicfabric.com/

Here are some excerpts:


Jon Fishman(Fish-shaman)Sonic Rhythm Dress
This dress, created especially for Phish percussionist Jon Fishman (and modeled after one he traditionally wears), contains a special sound collage composed of the musician's personal inspirations, including Jimi Hendrix, Sun Ra, Led Zeppelin, Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bob Marley, and lectures by Robert Thurman, Joseph Campbell, and Terrence McKenna. The dress was "played" for the first time in public (using custom palm-mounted tape head apparatus) during a Phish concert in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 16, 2004 in front of 20,000 people.
Sonic Shaman/Superhero Dress #1
The fabric for this dress is what started it all. Made from the original batch woven at the Rhode Island School of Design, it contains 100 original, individually-recorded cassette tapes, including jam sessions from my high school punk band, mix tapes donated by friends, Jack Kerouac readings, my quintete for winds (wind recorded blowing from four directions in four different locations and mixed on an analog 4-track), plus the essential Beethoven and Beatles. Before being made into a dress for a show at the Felissimo Design House in spring of 2003, the first two panels of Sonic Fabric were flown as "prayer flags" in various locations around New York City just after the first anniversary of September 11th.
Tell-Tail Thangkas
sonic fabric and silkscreen, 2004

As a kid, I used to imagine that the small strands of cassette tape we used as wind indicators, or tell-tails, on our sailboat could emit sound if the wind hit them just the right way. Many years later I learned about Tibetan prayer flags, small, colorful panels of cotton imprinted with blessings and hung outdoors near sacred sites where the wind "activates" the mantras and carries them out into the world. A marriage of these two concepts became my mission, and Sonic Fabric was born.
A thangka is a Tibetan Buddhist scroll painting intended to convey sacred teachings. The Tell-Tail Thangkas, 18"X24" each, are, like prayer flags, intended to be hung in the breeze where their sonic potential can be activated. The sound collage recorded onto this batch of fabric is called The Sounds of (1/2)Life, and contains music and spoken word that has been important to me throughout my life. Recorded on an analog 4-track, I was able to weave Laurie Anderson together with Beethoven, my high-school punk band with Coltrane, Tibetan monks with the icaros of Peruvian shamans.
 
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Cyborg Suits Strut the Catwalk
By Mark Baard

Story location:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0, ... 72,00.html

02:00 AM Dec. 08, 2005 PT

BOSTON -- It's been 10 years since Alex "Sandy" Pentland's graduate students began strolling around the MIT campus looking like cyborgs, straining under the weight of bulky "wearable" computers and heavy-duty eyeglasses with built-in displays.

Now Pentland is taking a lighter approach to the problem of melding man and machine, collaborating with haute couture designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier on cyborg-inspired fashions built from so-called smart fabrics.

Designs incorporating computer chips and sensors could monitor the wearer's health, or extend their social network, Pentland said here recently at a futuristic fashion show presented by the Materials Research Society, or MRS, where he cited Star Trek as a major inspiration.

"It's worth it to start thinking about Star Trek and this cyborg stuff, because that's where we're headed," said Pentland, who directs MIT Media Lab's Human Dynamics Group and is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of wearable computing.

The MRS show last week did not exactly take the audience where no man has gone before. But the models did show off some of the more-commercial bets the clothing industry is placing on high-tech wearable gear.

BO-busting jackets and MP3-playing ski suits strutted their stuff in a show heavy on polyester with nanoparticle coatings, and light on the kinds of "smart clothing" that contain sensors and computers Pentland was promoting.

Nanoparticle coatings are already becoming so popular -- and nanotechnology such a buzzword in the textiles business -- that one organization at the MRS, the Hohenstein Institutes, introduced a quality label that would certify consumers that a particular garment contains nanotechnology.

The German company Tex A Med exhibited silver nanoparticle-coated underwear, which offers relief from a form of chronic dermatitis and some allergies.

Other companies are developing "self-cleaning" suits whose surfaces are designed to mimic the texture of the lotus leaf, or a fly's hairy wings, which deflect dirt and water.

Pentland encouraged scientists to look beyond the new coatings to the applications possible with wearable sensors and computers -- heart-rate monitoring systems and cognitive aids that could help memory-impaired people remember faces and complete day-to-day tasks.

But he conceded that more elaborate and "social" wearable technologies, including those that change color and shape in response to human touch and movement, are a few years away.

"I think we'll most likely be seeing those first in fashions in nightclubs over the next couple of years," Pentland said.
 
From New Scientist

This stuff sounds like Science Fiction intruding into RL. There're several stories where people have body armour that hardens on impact, but I can't remember what they are or who wrote them. William Gibson is a possibility, or Peter F Hamilton...

US and Canadian skiers get smart armour
16:52 14 February 2006

NewScientist.com news service
Will Knight

Enlarge image
d3o has been incorporated into skiwear for the US and Canadian Olympic teams (Image: Spyder)A futuristic flexible material that instantly hardens into armour upon impact will protect US and Canadian skiers from injury on the slalom runs at this year's Winter Olympics.

The lightweight bendable material, known as d3o, can be worn under normal ski clothing. It will provide protection for US and Canadian skiers taking part in slalom and giant slalom races in Turin, Italy. Skiers normally have to wear bulky arm and leg guards to protect themselves from poles placed along the slalom run.

Skiwear company Spyder, based in Colorado, US, developed racing suits incorporating d3o along the shins and forearms and offered members of the US and Canadian Olympic alpine ski teams the chance to try them out several months ago. "Now they love it and won't ski without it," claims Richard Palmer, CEO of UK-based d3o Labs, which developed the material.

Although the exact chemical ingredients of d3o are a commercial secret, Palmer says the material is synthesised by mixing together a viscose fluid and a polymer. Following synthesis, liquid d3o is poured into a mould that matches the shape of the body part it will protect.

Brief impact
The resulting material exhibits a material property called "strain rate sensitivity". Under normal conditions the molecules within the material are weakly bound and can move past each with ease, making the material flexible. But the shock of sudden deformation causes the chemical bonds to strengthen and the moving molecules to lock, turning the material into a more solid, protective shield.

In laboratory testing, d3o-guards provided as much protection as most conventional protective materials, its makers claim. But Phil Green, research director at d3o Labs, says it is difficult to precisely measure the material's properties because the hardening effect only last as long as the impact itself.

However, Green believes it may be possible to alter the properties of d3o for new applications. "There are certainly opportunities to dabble with the chemistry and enhance the effect," he told New Scientist. The ultimate goal is "flexible ballistic protection", he says.

Another potential application may be sound-proofing. The propagation of sound waves should generate a similar strain to an impact, so it may be feasible to create a material that becomes more sound proof in response to increasing noise. "It could have some very interesting, unexplored properties," Green says.
 
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What You'll Wear in 10 Years

By Mmoma Ejiofor, Forbes.com 02:00 AM Mar, 24, 2006

Forget fancy camcorder phones and wireless internet routers; the future's most innovative gadgets come in a strapless size 4.

And we're not talking about just any size 4. These fetching gowns will come complete with remote controls, global positioning systems and radio frequency identification tags, making catwalk shows look more like scenes from Mission Impossible than showcases of exclusive designer wear. Why? With the rapid merging of fashion and technology, future brands of haute couture will probably owe more to Cisco Systems than Coco Chanel.

Designers have been experimenting with innovative materials for years. Once-revolutionary synthetic fabrics such as polyester, Spandex, Gore-Tex and Ultrasuede are now used in a wide range of apparel and footwear. Recently, hip, Los Angeles-based denim designer Serfontaine Jeans started using DuPont's Lycra T400, which is made from multicomponent yarns, to create stretch jeans that don't lose their elasticity, thereby virtually eliminating the need for a belt.

But we're not just talking about clothes made with cool fabrics that retain their shapes or better resist stains -- what's known as "smart clothing." We're also talking about clothing with new technology incorporated into its design, aka "wearable technology." Many companies are already blending fashion and technology in a limited way: Burlington, Vermont-based snowboard maker Burton sells the Clone Mini Disc Jacket, which is a coat with a built-in Sony mini disc player and a remote control sewn into the sleeve. And to help fashion-forward customers keep even cooler during the summer, Japanese company Kuuchoufuku makes jackets with built-in fans.

But the real high-tech designs of the future have yet to reach the stores. These will consist mainly of technologically enabled fabrics and garments that are only being sketched out in ateliers and research labs around the world.

According to Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst of Port Washington, New York-based NPD Group, wearable technology still accounts for less than 1 percent of the U.S. fashion industry's retail sales. Although this sector is still in its infancy, the fashion industry as a whole is exhibiting solid growth. Last year, total U.S. apparel sales reached $181 billion, an almost 4 percent increase from 2004.

However, Cohen says wearable technology will eventually become a basic commodity, much like bluejeans. "Why buy a basic pair of khakis when future ones will be able to keep your legs warm with heating coils built into the lining? The future of technology in fiber and products is only a few years away."

As usual, expect to see wearable tech and smart clothing first adopted by fringe groups such as skiers and students before the concepts catch on with the mainstream. NPD expects that ski-wear and active-wear companies, such as Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas and Timberland, will be the most likely to drive development. Last year, Adidas released Adidas 1 footwear, a running shoe with an embedded microchip that monitors the terrain underfoot and accordingly adjusts the level of shock absorption provided by the shoe's heel.

Students at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe young men with a keen interest in technology are more likely to embrace wearable technology trends than are women, who will prefer "computational clothing," which does not sacrifice its aesthetic value for the sake of technology.

In London, it's not just clothing that is becoming technical -- designers are innovating with the way clothes are fitted. Bodymetrics, a London-based fashion-technology firm, and Serfontaine Jeans have joined together to create the world's first pair of perfectly fitted jeans. Using a light scanner, Bodymetrics has created a pod to scan a client's body and record exact body measurements.

Once in their underwear, clients stand in a pitch-black chamber while a light flashes over their body for eight seconds. Their measurements are then recorded and a pair of "perfect fit" jeans arrive in the mail within two weeks -- for $530 a pop, or more than twice the price of a regular pair of Serfontaine jeans.

But innovative clothing need not be so expensive. Students at MIT's Media Lab are also experimenting with affordable wearable tech. Using fabrics imbued with various metals, such as organza, copper, carbon and stainless steel, they have produced conductive clothing that is still soft to the touch. Amanda Parkes, an MIT student, has been studying how "nitinol" -- an acronym for Nickel Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratory, it's a material that contains a nearly equal mixture of nickel and titanium -- changes shape during fluctuations in temperature. With the application of a small amount of heat, a nitinol-based long-sleeve shirt can become short-sleeved in seconds, while still being able to revert back to its original shape.

Some ideas are even more radical. Suzanne Lee, a senior professor at St. Martin's School of Fashion in London and the author of Fashioning the Future, describes a " spray-on dress" made from a chemical formula that allows you to create a temporary dress from virtually nothing. The chemical is sprayed directly onto the skin to form a cloud of non-woven cloth, which can be styled as desired. At the MIT Media Lab, students have also conjured up "epi-skin," a piece of jewelry made from epithelial skin cells that are cultured in the lab and grown in a test tube.

Some of the concepts being explored, such as air-conditioned jackets and wrinkle-resistant sweaters, will probably be on the market before long. But others, such as talking T-shirts and airplane dresses, may never find a practical application, let alone see the light of day -- no matter how cool they sound.

Now if we can get a pair of sneakers that give us a good workout without us having to move, we'd be set.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/1,70481-0.html
 
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What I'll be wearing 10 years from now is the same as I wear now. The same as I wore 10 years ago. The individual items may change, but I don't see why I should make any changes.
 
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I'll be wearing much the same as I've always worn, possibly in improved facrics, with minor stylistic tweaks, but that's about it...

Question, of course, about built in technology, is what happens to it when you chuck it in the washing machine...
 
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Hey, the article came up with that pun, not me
Liquid Armor

Flexible full-body protection that could save our troops' lives and limbs is at the top of the list for many researchers and technology companies. One such product could soon make its way to Iraq. As this ScienCentral News video explains, the secret ingredient is a liquid that could turn lightweight material into full-body armor.

Full Liquid Jacket

The current war in Iraq is leaving behind a legacy of wounded soldiers. For every fatality there have been between seven or eight injured -- a number amounting to 18,356 as of June 11, 2006 (U.S. Department of Defense). That's a higher ratio of injured to dead than in any previous American war, a mixed blessing that can largely be attributed to advances in body armor and improved battlefield medical treatment.

A new "liquid armor" could be the solution for protecting the parts of the body that aren't currently covered by standard-issue ballistic vests – arms and legs, where many of these devastating and life-threatening injuries occur. Co-developed by two research teams – one led by Norman Wagner at the University of Delaware, and the other led by Eric Wetzel at the U.S. Army Research Lab in Aberdeen, MD – the liquid technology will soon lead to light, flexible full-body armor.

The liquid - called shear thickening fluid is actually a mixture of hard nanoparticles and nonevaporating liquid. It flows normally under low-energy conditions, but when agitated or hit with an impact it stiffens and behaves like a solid. This temporary stiffening occurs less than a millisecond after impact, and is caused by the nanoparticles forming tiny clusters inside the fluid. "The particles jam up forming a log jam structure that prevents things from penetrating through them," Wagner explains.

Wagner and Wetzel developed a way to specially treat ballistic fabrics, such as Kevlar, with the liquid, making them dramatically more resistant to puncture and much better at reducing blunt trauma. "We integrate those materials with the fabric itself, imbibe it in a way, such that the shear thickening fluid is not at all evident, it's not a coating on the outside. It's actually intercalated directly into the material," says Wagner.

The stiffening of the liquid allows the energy of an impact to be distributed over a much larger surface area – so the force, rather than being focused on the area of a bullet head, is distributed over the area of the surrounding fabric. Ballistic tests have demonstrated that the treatment can actually prevent bullets from penetrating.

The treated Kevlar is even better at resisting puncture from sharp projectiles, such as knife stabs or shrapnel from roadside bombs. As Wagner explains, Kevlar was never designed to function against puncture. "Bullet proof vests and Kevlar are not very good against stab threats like puncture that you might see in correctional prison guards or from fragmentation threats on the battlefield," he says.

The treatment of the fabric prevents the fibers from spreading apart or "windowing," which keeps sharp objects from entering. That means that not only would materials treated with shear thickening fluids be better against conventional threats such as bullets, but would also resist puncture from shrapnel. The materials would also remain light – only 20 percent heavier after treatment - and flexible, which means they could be used for much-needed protection of the limbs.

"We can make thin layers of material for use on the arms and legs that remain flexible under normal motion, but become rigid and absorb energy when impacted by a ballistic threat or a knife," Wagner says.

U.S. manufacturer Armor Holdings recently licensed the technology and plans to release its first products by the end of the year. Wagner says there could also be many civilian applications – like protecting people during car crashes, or making tires sturdier.

Some of Wagner's recent work was published in the May/June 2005 issue of the Journal of Rheology and was featured in the May 2006 issue of Scientific American. For a complete list of publications see Dr. Wagner's website. Some of the funding sources included IFPRI and the Army Research Laboratory CMT program through the Center for Composite Materials of the University of Delaware as well as the NASA Delaware Space Grant College and Fellowship Program.
 
Probably useful, if you can get over wearing stuff that says 'Leatherman' across it:

The Leatherman Tread will come out this Summer. It’s an interesting departure for the company, and an industry first: a serious multi-tool that can be worn on the wrist. Each link on the band includes two to three functional tools, for a total of 25 usable features.

It’s an ingenious design. The bracelet is fully customizable and can be re-built with slotted fasteners. The user can rearrange links, add or remove tools, or just adjust the bracelet’s size for comfort down to one quarter of an inch. Even the clasp is functional, with a bottle opener and #2 square drive. Other tools include hex drives, screwdrivers, box wrenches, a carbide glass breaker, and a hook-style box cutter that doubles as a SIM card pick.

Know what you’re thinking: Those links are going to snap off when I torque the hex nuts on my portable DAC. Wrong. This MacGyver wristband is constructed of metal-injected molded 17-4 stainless steel. The tools may be tiny, but they’re not going to snap or bend under stress. There’s an optional Swiss quartz movement watch (available in the fall of 2015), but I see the crafty Bushwick guys opting for the naked bracelet, which looks kinda Chrome Hearts.

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/leatherman-tread/?mbid=synd_slate
 
We were discussing that Leatherman thingy on my Outdoors forum and though most have the traditional sort, somehow they wont be getting this new one.
 
A TED talk by a believer from Lancs.

NOTE: This was originally posted in the 'Does Magick Work?' thread, where it was judged an ill-fit because it addresses tech innovation rather than esoterica. The context of innovation is dynamic color changing in materials and fabrics, so it has been moved to this thread.
 
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