Electronic Fashion

New forms of digital expression

The mannequette is a prototyping platform for electronic fashion garments. It is used in different ways: (a) in-situ, iterating and deciding upon fabrics at a market; (b) for prototyping light (LED) patterns and sensors on a miniature dress form with fabrics by using the mixer; (c) for integrating a previously prototyped and now completed pattern and sensor interactions into an assembled garment; (d) in a completed garment created in a runway show.
The mannequette is a prototyping platform for electronic fashion garments. It is used in different ways: (a) in-situ, iterating and deciding upon fabrics at a market; (b) for prototyping light (LED) patterns and sensors on a miniature dress form with fabrics by using the mixer; (c) for integrating a previously prototyped and now completed pattern and sensor interactions into an assembled garment; (d) in a completed garment created in a runway show.

Digital tools enable rich new forms of self-expression, and we explore this in the context of electronic fashion.

To enable our work, we design new toolkits for building electronic fashion. This gives designers the ability to access electronic sensors and actuatuators without needing to write computer code [Seyed, T., and Tang, A. (2019). Mannequette: Understanding and Enabling Collaboration and Creativity on Avant-Garde Fashion-Tech Runways. In DIS 2019: Conference on Designing Interactive Systems 2019, 10 pages.] , all while enabling their creativity [Pratte, S., Hoover, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2022). nLITEn: A Wearables Toolkit for Enabling Creativity in Fashion Technology Design. In CHI22 Workshop: Toolkits & Wearables - Developing Toolkits for Exploring Wearable Designs.] .

We see electronic fashion as a way to engage people in storytelling, be it to promote new forms of empathy [Pratte, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2021). Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools. In TEI 2021: International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction.] , or to express a story one has to tell [Pratte, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2023). HACKLES: A Case Study on Using Data to Create Experiences with Wearables. In CHI22 Workshop: Toolkits & Wearables - Developing Toolkits for Exploring Wearable Designs.] .

We help push the space of avante garde electronic fashion, and have explored how the runway space shapes and enables rich storytelling [Pratte, S., Tang, A., Hoover, S., Hoover, M., Laprairie, M., Larose, C., and Oehlberg, L. (2023). Towards a Design Space for Storytelling on the Fashion Technology Runway. In TEI '23: Seventeeth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction.]

We are also interested in how these electronic garments can be used for communicating challenging concepts and ideas.

Publications

Seyed, T., and Tang, A. (2019). Mannequette: Understanding and Enabling Collaboration and Creativity on Avant-Garde Fashion-Tech Runways. In DIS 2019: Conference on Designing Interactive Systems 2019, 10 pages.
Acceptance: 25% - 100/400. Honourable mention (top 2% of all submissions)
Pratte, S., Hoover, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2022). nLITEn: A Wearables Toolkit for Enabling Creativity in Fashion Technology Design. In CHI22 Workshop: Toolkits & Wearables - Developing Toolkits for Exploring Wearable Designs.
Pratte, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2021). Evoking Empathy: A Framework for Describing Empathy Tools. In TEI 2021: International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction.
Acceptance: 29.9% - 30/134.
Pratte, S., Tang, A., and Oehlberg, L. (2023). HACKLES: A Case Study on Using Data to Create Experiences with Wearables. In CHI22 Workshop: Toolkits & Wearables - Developing Toolkits for Exploring Wearable Designs.
Pratte, S., Tang, A., Hoover, S., Hoover, M., Laprairie, M., Larose, C., and Oehlberg, L. (2023). Towards a Design Space for Storytelling on the Fashion Technology Runway. In TEI '23: Seventeeth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction.