Jenny, ‘a super newbie to the world of making clothing and work with electronics‘ according to her own assessment, made a super fantastic, star-light animated shirt called Alioth named after a bright white star in the Ursa Major constellation also known as the Big Dipper.
I am a fan of simplicity, subtle elegance yet sophisticated look. All these attributes are excellently combined in ‘Alioth – a day and night themed shirt’ made from a white muslin, representing the day and Starry Night fabric, electrified with LED sparkle to represent the night sky.
Alioth is Jenny’s first work with wearable tech which is remarkable considering her first contact to the eTextile world was only very recently, at a creative fabric workshop she attended last January.
Inspired by a constellation shirt she saw during this workshop, Jenny picked up the challenge and made one of the loveliest, illuminated shirts I have seen.
Interesting her straight forward approach to wearable tech: ‘I don’t know a lot about programming micro-controllers, so I picked the least intimidating thing out of the vast array of Arduino variants – which is Aniomagic’s simple to use eTextile system‘.
As Jenny demonstrates – one does not need a degree in electrical or software engineering to get started. All it needs is creativity, embracing the new to re-invent fashion.
Wearable technology does not have to be intimidating for designer. Huge advancements in eTextile developments, specifically targeted towards the creative community around LilyPad, Aniomagic System and soon to be launched Adafruit’s Flora support the creative fashion design community, enabling them to add interactivity to fashion design – on the fly.