Fashion designer creates interactive clothing

New robotized clothing range is able to react to the presence of strangers.

Chinese fashion designer Ying Gao recently unveiled her latest collection of interactive and responsive clothing, called Possible Tomorrows. The collection consists of two robotic garments that have been designed to complement each other, but include a fingerprint scanner that activates the movement of the garment when a stranger’s fingerprint isn’t recognized.

The movement of the material was inspired by hypotrochoids – a continuous curve drawn by a single point that’s linked to a mobile circle, which was most famously used by the Spirograph game. The random nature of the pattern’s creation means that the material appears to have a random and very natural movement – as you’ll see from the video below.

This isn’t the first time that Gao has used technology in her design work. In 2016 she created a range called Neutralité Dresses, which was an outfit that continued moving until someone stared at it for too long. Designer Behnaz Farahi has also produced a piece of responsive clothing: a 3D-printed shawl with an embedded camera. Is responsive clothing the future of fashion, or just a flash in the pan?