Beauty and the Bits: Smart Clothes Fashion Show
About the show
Beauty and the Bits was a 1997 wearable-technology fashion show at the MIT Media Lab. We worked with students from Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, Creapole in Paris, Domus Academy in Milan, and Parsons School of Design in New York.
The participating teams submitted close to 100 concepts that incorporated displays, sensors, input devices, and electrical connections into clothing and accessories. Some garments included working technology, while others presented speculative ideas about the future of wearable computing.
One design turned a denim jacket into a musical instrument. Conductive embroidery formed a keyboard in the fabric, connected to a small computer and synthesizer. It was a direct example of the show's central design question: could the technology become part of an ordinary-looking garment rather than equipment worn on top of it?
Our team contributed Van and WearASL. I worked as a technology collaborator with Joshua Weaver and Barbara Rosario on a concept that combined cameras and wearable computers to translate American Sign Language into speech and speech into Braille. More information is available on the dedicated WearASL project page.
The collaboration continued beyond the original show. In November 1998, DyPERS was presented as part of another future-fashion and computer-graphics event in Japan.
The show should be understood as an experimental presentation rather than a shared technical evaluation: the participating concepts differed in how much of their proposed functionality had been implemented.
Alongside my technical contribution, I also took part in the show itself and wore one of the featured outfits.
Nuria Oliver wearing one of the featured outfits at the Smart Clothes Fashion Show.
A smart-clothing design presented at the fashion show.