wearable technology: design at the seams
FEATURE
by ANYA KURENNAYA ANYA KURENNAYA, A STUDENT IN THE NEW MA FASHION STUDIES PROGRAM, LOCATED IN PARSONS’ SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN HISTORY AND THEORY, OFFERS A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY, ARGUING THAT THE UNION OF FASHION AND TECHNOLOGY PRESENTS OPPORTUNITIES FOR RETHINKING AESTHETIC SYSTEMS AND SUSTAINABILITY
As time goes on, clothing will continue to become smarter. It will perform more functions and tasks, allowing us to do more and be more—of whatever it is we want to be. Our clothing will allow us to trace the details of its production, monitor body functions, and communicate with one another in new ways, by integrating the latest technology in often virtually seamless ways. We already have smartphones; why not “smartclothes”? In fact, such wearable technology already exists, ranging from commercial products to concept-driven design explorations. Wearable technology is, most simply, what happens when design and technology meet on the human body. In an article published in the Observer on January 2, 2011, Dilys Williams, director for sustainable fashion at the London College of Fashion, cited wearable technology as the single most important development in the field of fashion for the next quarter century. Judging by the current range of applications as well as those in development, Williams may be right. Parsons recently hosted a symposium on the topic, celebrating the launch of the Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons and exploring functional aesthetics—what lab director and Parsons professor Sabine Seymour calls “the concept of merging a fashionable technology object deemed aestheti-
cally pleasant with technically enhanced functionalities.”¹ Fashion is itself a technology of the body, one we use to communicate identity and define the social and cultural boundaries of our bodies. And as technological devices have themselves become more visible as a result of increased portability, it is only natural that they have permeated the boundaries of our bodies; earbuds, headsets, and wires abound. Conversely, the fashion impulse increasingly informs technology: Witness the infinite possibilities for cell phone customization that transform our phones into extensions of ourselves, conveying our personalities through color, shape, size, embellishments, and even the applications we have installed. On an aesthetic level, the techno-chic fetishization of circuitry evident in 1990s wearable technology is disappearing, to be replaced by a more streamlined integration of technology that eliminates the distinction between form and function. Such a seamless fusion naturally leads us to consider the possibilities and limitations of fashion combined with technology. At first, ¹ Sabine Seymour, Functional Aesthetics: Visions in Fashionable Technology (New York: Springer, 2010).
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