User Designer

Imagine clothes that fit you perfectly. No need to get measured and fitted by a tailor. By plugging your new trousers into an electronic gadget you can change the size, shape and style of the clothes. There’s no need to cut and stitch.

Shape-memory alloys (SMA) are woven into the fabric. The SMAs change shape when power is applied and remember the shape after the power is disconnected.

Above are two images from Hussein Chalayan’s Spring 2007 fashion show. The image on the left shows a close up of a dress before it automatically altered its shape into what you can see on the right. There’s a video of the fashion show here – jump two minutes in for wonderful examples of clothes altering their shape while worn.

I wonder what will the first temporal fashion be? Will there be fashionistas wandering around wearing clothes that all change in the same way at the same time across the face of the globe? Or will hip be that which repeatedly and smoothly deforms with three twists left, one twist right and shows a brief hint of orange?