TECHNO FASHION
Literature.
On this page you will find a list of writers, theoreticians, books, articles and other written documents on the topic of wearable electronics and intelligent textiles.
Click on the titles and images to get redirected to the relevant websites.
Techno Fashion by Bradley Quinn
From digital-display dresses to remote control couture, this book exposes the revolutionary interface between contemporary fashion and technology. As twenty-first century fashion makes a dramatic departure from traditional methods, designers no longer turn to the past for inspiration, but look to the hi-tech future. The result is techno fashion, the new wave of intelligent clothing that fuses fashion with communication technology, electronic textiles, and sophisticated design innovations that express new ideas about appearance, construction and wearability.
Born out of the collaboration between fashion designers, researchers and scientists, this new dialogue could be the most significant design innovation in fashion’s history, or indicate its eventual demise. Either way, techno fashion promises to forever disrupt the historical narrative of fashion evolution.
Through interviews with designers ranging from innovators such as Hussein Chalayan and Tristan Webber to mavericks like Alexander McQueen, Bradley Quinn examines the impact of this new direction. The fusion of design and technology introduced by Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake has created another direction for clothing, creating a new breed of designer-cum-scientist who redefines the way we dress, communicate, and even respond to environmental changes. As technology begins to shape fashion's future, it redefines the boundaries between clothing, body and machine, forever transforming the ethics and lifestyles traditionally designated by codes of dress.
Fashion Futures by Bradley Quinn
Today fashion is moving forward at a faster pace than ever before, with advancing technologies and new materials reinventing clothing as we know it.
Futuristic garment designs are often inspired by surprising sources: biological science, climate change, space suits, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. Fashion Futures offers a fascinating survey of these new directions, charting the transformational products, design processes, maverick materials, and groundbreaking practitioners that are revolutionizing fashion.
Design expert Bradley Quinn also explores radical retail operations, fashion forecasting, and the relationship between fashion and other disciplines. Featuring inspirational interviews with international trend forecasters and designers, and packed with illustrations of extreme designs and prototypes, Fashion Futures is a thought-provoking overview of how fashion will look, perform and be manufactured and purchased in the twenty-first century.
Fashion, Culture & Identity by Fred Davis
Today fashion is moving forward at a faster pace than ever before, with advancing technologies and new materials reinventing clothing as we know it.
Futuristic garment designs are often inspired by surprising sources: biological science, climate change, space suits, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology. Fashion Futures offers a fascinating survey of these new directions, charting the transformational products, design processes, maverick materials, and groundbreaking practitioners that are revolutionizing fashion.
Design expert Bradley Quinn also explores radical retail operations, fashion forecasting, and the relationship between fashion and other disciplines. Featuring inspirational interviews with international trend forecasters and designers, and packed with illustrations of extreme designs and prototypes, Fashion Futures is a thought-provoking overview of how fashion will look, perform and be manufactured and purchased in the twenty-first century.
The BERG Companion to Fashion by Valerie Steele
Amazon description: "Derided by some as frivolous, even dangerous, and celebrated by others as art, fashion is anything but a neutral topic. Behind the hype and the glamor is an industry that affects all cultures of the world.
A potent force in the global economy, fashion is also highly influential in everyday lives, even among those who may feel impervious. This handy volume is a one-stop reference for anyone interested in fashion -- its meaning, history and theory. From Avedon to codpiece, dandyism to the G-string, Japanese fashion to subcultures, trickle down to Zoot suit, The Berg Companion to Fashion provides a comprehensive overview of this most fascinating of topics and will serve as the benchmark guide to the subject for many years to come. This volume contains over 300 in-depth entries covering designers, articles of clothing, key concepts and styles."
The Empire of Fashion by Gilles Lipovetsky
Amazon description: "In a book full of playful irony and striking insights, the controversial social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky draws on the history of fashion to demonstrate that the modern cult of appearance and superficiality actually serves the common good. Focusing on clothing, bodily deportment, sex roles, sexual practices, and political rhetoric as forms of "fashion," Lipovetsky bounds across two thousand years of history, showing how the evolution of fashion from an upper-class privilege into a vehicle of popular expression closely follows the rise of democratic values. Whereas Tocqueville feared that mass culture would create passive citizens incapable of political reasoning, Lipovetsky argues that today's mass-produced fashion offers many choices, which in turn enable consumers to become complex individuals within a consolidated, democratically educated society.
Superficiality fosters tolerance among different groups within a society, claims Lipovetsky. To analyze fashion's role in smoothing over social conflict, he abandons class analysis in favor of an inquiry into the symbolism of everyday life and the creation of ephemeral desire. Lipovetsky examines the malaise experienced by people who, because they can fulfill so many desires, lose their sense of identity. His conclusions raise disturbing questions about personal joy and anguish in modern democracy."
Fashionable Technology by Sabine Seymour
The interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, wearables for short, and fashion, design and science is a highly promising and topical subject. Offered here is a compact survey of the theory involved and an explanation of the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing. The practical application is explained in detail and numerous illustrations serve as clarification.
Over 50 well-known designers, research institutes, companies and artists, among them Philips, Burton, MIT Media Lab, XS Labs, New York University, Hussein Chalayan, Cute Circuit or International Fashion Machines are introduced by means of their latest, often still unpublished, project, and a survey of their work to date.
Given for the first time is a list of all the relevant information on research institutes, materials, publications etc. A must for all those wishing to know everything about fashionable technology.
Fashion Zeitgeist
By Barbara Vinken
Fashion Zeitgeist by Barbara Vinken
Amazon description: "Although it is appealing to think that fashion turns away from conventions, is this really the case? Or are "pioneering" designs simply part of a cyclical revival of forgotten fashions?
Looking at some of the most influential designers of the twentieth century--from Yamamoto to Gaultier to Lagerfeld--Vinken considers the politics and philosophies that have been the driving force directing their sense of style. Vinken shows how fashion trends are informed by the past. Chanel, under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld, is viewed as the only fashion house to have remained fresh after one hundred years, yet is this success essentially proof of the self-referential qualities fashion has adopted? What inspired the fetish for labels at the end of the twentieth century? Answering these questions and many more, this thought-provoking book shows how beauty, gender, sexuality, commerce, and dandyism have persisted in defining the fashion system."
Fashion & its Social Agendas by Diana Crane
Amazon description: "It has long been said that clothes make the man (or woman), but is it still true today? If so, how has the information clothes convey changed over the years? Using a wide range of historical and contemporary materials, Diana Crane demonstrates how the social significance of clothing has been transformed.
Crane compares nineteenth-century societies—France and the United States—where social class was the most salient aspect of social identity signified in clothing with late twentieth-century America, where lifestyle, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ethnicity are more meaningful to individuals in constructing their wardrobes. Today, clothes worn at work signify social class, but leisure clothes convey meanings ranging from trite to political. In today's multicode societies, clothes inhibit as well as facilitate communication between highly fragmented social groups.
An absorbing work, "Fashion and Its Social Agendas" stands out as a critical study of gender, fashion, and consumer culture."
Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity by Ulrich Lehmann
Amazon description: "Far from being a frivolous subject, fashion is the supreme expression of the contemporary spirit. Sartorial elements embody the pace and rhythm of modern society and culture as few other ideas or commodities do. Indeed, the hallmarks of la modernité found their most immediate reflection in la mode. But no one until now has attempted a rigorous analysis of fashion, on a par with attempts to construct a philosophy of art, music, or literature. In this book Ulrich Lehmann sets out to do just that. He explores the interplay between philosophical ideas and fashion, reading texts and textiles, discourse and dresses, to investigate modernity from a variety of perspectives: artistic, philosophical, sociological, and historical.
The stage for this interplay between intellectual concept and sartorial expression is Parisian society from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Lehmann focuses on a core of pivotal individuals, beginning with Charles Baudelaire in the 1850s, continuing with Stéphane Mallarmé and Georg Simmel, and arriving at Walter Benjamin, Louis Aragon, and André Breton almost a century later. The book's title comes from Benjamin's use of the German word Tigersprung (tiger's leap) to describe fashion's leap into the past to create an ever-changing present. Lehmann focuses in particular on Benjamin's Arcades Project as an unfinished work on the philosophy of fashion. He also looks at the role of fashion in the work of the Dadaists and surrealists, who used clothes and accessories as simulacra for the human body and mind.
Fashion, according to Lehmann, does not just reflect social change but is a social force in its own right. In creating the perfect expression of the contemporary spirit—by drawing on the past—fashion excels at anticipating things to come."
Fashion: A Philosophy by Lars Svendsen
Amazon description: "Fashion is at once a familiar yet mysteriously elite world that we all experience, whether we’re buying a new pair of jeans, reading Vogue, or watching the latest episode of Project Runway. Lars Svendsen dives into that world in Fashion, exploring the myths, ideas, and history that make up haute couture, the must-have trends over the centuries, and the very concept of fashion itself.
Fashion opens with an exploration of all the possible meanings encompassed by the word “fashion,” as Svendsen probes its elusive place in art, politics, and history. Ultimately, however, he focuses on the most common use of the term: clothing. With his trademark dry wit, he deftly dismantles many of the axioms of the industry and its supporters. For example, he points out that some of the latest fashions shown on runways aren’t actually “fashionable” in any sense of the word, arguing that they’re more akin to modern art works, and he argues against the increasingly prevalent idea that plastic surgery and body modification are part of a new wave of consumerism. Svendsen draws upon the writings of thinkers from Adam Smith to Roland Barthes to analyze fashion as both a historical phenomenon and a philosophy of aesthetics. He also traces the connections between the concepts of fashion and modernity and ultimately considers the importance of evolving fashions to such fields as art, politics, and philosophy.
Whether critiquing a relentless media culture that promotes perfect bodies or parsing the never-ending debate over the merits of conformity versus individual style, Lars Svendsen offers an engaging and intriguing analysis of fashion and the motivations behind its constant pursuit of the new."