Second Style Fashion Mag for Second Life

Check out this mag from Second Life fashion guru Celebrity Trollop. It's packed with fashionista info and pix.

http://www.secondstyle.com/

Afterparty

Cool Article from PingMag

I found this very cool article about a Persian-African designer in the Japanese online mag, Ping. It's got some very cool stuff by a former grafitti artist turned designer.

http://www.pingmag.jp/2005/10/11/hardcore-fashion-from-hamansutra/

Ping Magazine from Japan

Check out this cool interview with a Polish fashion illustrator in Japan's Ping Magazine

Przemek Sobocki: Storytelling through fashion illustration

Tokyo Street Style

Cool site with candids from Toyko. http://www.style-arena.jp/english/index.htm

Check Out Black Spots

If you've seen AdBuster magazine, a totally cool Canadian zine that tries to provide alternatives to corporate consumerism, you've probably run into the Black Spot sneaker. The idea is to manufacture a needed item in a sustainable way (no sweatshops, eco-friendly and unbranded). Cool concept, cool shoe. Most importantly, it addresses an important issue--how do we brand our work. We want to indentify things we make so that if people like what we do, they can find more like it..but, do we want to force them to be walking billboards for us when they wear them? Corporate marketers would say YES, but that's self serving and a question to be addressed. For more info about Black Spots, check out the site:

http://adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotshoes/home.php

EDOC Laundry

Cool clothes that have hidden secrets..code words that lead to stories on the website. Interesting combination of webworld and tangible fash. Check it out at http://www.edoclaundry.com/

Fashion in Colors

Fashion In Colors
On view December 9, 2005–March 26, 2006
Organized by the Kyoto Costume Institute, Fashion in Colors explores color as a design element through 300 years of Western fashion. Check it out at: http://ndm.si.edu/EXHIBITIONS/fashion_in_colors/

Los Angeles Fashion Market

JANUARY 13-17, 2006 SUMMER (FRIDAY-TUESDAY, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm)

The LA Summer Fashion market opens tomorrow at the California Market Center. Showrooms are open 9-6 and this could be an interesting field trip option to get ideas. If you want to go, contact Clay at 805-453-5246

Find it here. Discover thousands of new and established showrooms and exhibitors for Summer '06. Find it all under one roof only at the California Market Center, the premier marketplace in California for fashion, accessories, gift & home resources.FEATURED SHOWROOMSWomen's wear. Hundreds of women's apparel resources on Floors 2A, and 3A&3B.Contemporary. Directional and young designer women's & men's resources ON 5.Street Couture. Edgy & directional women's & men's resources on Floor 11B.Urban. Women's & men's urban sportswear on Floor 4C.LA Kid's Market. Floor 6A is home to kids and tweens. Accessories & Intimate Apparel. Floor 10A&B have all the perfect accents for the season. Visit Floors 7C-13C for additional accessories, gifts & decor.Accessories to go. Floor 9A&B features accessories & leather goods available for immediate delivery.TEMPORARY EXHIBITORSBrighte Companies by ENK. Contemporary & directional women's & men's resources in the Main Lobby Fashion Theater. Friday - Monday only.Accessories & Intimate Apparel Salon. Fresh, new fashion accessories and intimate apparel exhibitors in Suite B1086. Friday - Monday only.LA Fashion Exhibitors by PCT. Women's updated apparel exhibitors on Floor 3C.LA Shoe Show. Hundreds of footwear lines on Floor 13B. Sunday & Monday only.RETAILERSRegister in the Main Lobby, bring a business card, Resale Tax I.D., and personal I.D.

Yip-Yip

F+R Hugs (Hug Shirt) from Cute Circuit

Amazing wearable tech garment from CuteCircuit

http://www.cutecircuit.com/

The F+R Hugs (Hug Shirt): is a shirt that allows to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance. Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one.

The System
The F+R Hugs is a Bluetooth accessory for Java enabled mobile phones. Hug shirts don’t have any assigned phone number, all the data goes from the sensors wirelessly to your mobile phone and your mobile phone delivers the data stream to your loved one phone and seamlessly is transmitted Bluetooth to the other person’s shirt (sounds complex but the operation takes the same few seconds it would take to send an SMS, or text message). You will be able to send hugs while you are on the move, in the same way and to the same places you are able to make phone calls (Rome to Tokyo, New York to Paris).

The system is very simple: a hug shirt (Bluetooth with sensors and actuators), a Bluetooth java enabled mobile phone with the Hug Me java software running (that understands what the sensors are communicating), and on the other side another phone and another shirt.
The hug shirt can be washed. The technology sandwiches (containing sensors and actuators), placed under each circle you see in the pictures, can be removed for washing and placed back in afterwards. In the same way the hug can be customized: total body or just around the shoulders, and so on. The tech sandwiches are plug and play, so that you don’t need to be an expert to place them and make it work! The hug shirts are available in many colors, so that you can move the tech sandwiches from shirt to shirt and remain fashionable.
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When touching the sensors on your shirt your mobile receives the data (hug pressure, skin temperature, heartbeat rate, time you are hugging for, and the name of the person you want to hug) and delivers it to the other person. If the other person or the sender doesn’t have the shirt she can just send an SMS text message, and it will be transformed into a hug! If you don’t need a hug you can switch it off.
The operation cost is the same of sending SMS, depending on your service provider (in Italy is very inexpensive). The hugs shirt is Bluetooth and works with mobile phones on any bandwidth (900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz and so on). Runs on rechargeable batteries. The Hug Shirt is built using RoHS components, it means that the Hug Shirt is lead-free and non-toxic.

Research
F+R Hugs started as a collaborative project with Interaction Designer and friend Rikako Sakai, and is an ongoing innovation project at CuteCircuit were we are further developing the concept through additional intensive participatory design sessions, questionnaires, interviews, iterative prototyping and body storming with 150 to 200 users in many countries and of many different nationalities, studying people behavior and emotions, to create a design respondent to all the qualities needed by users of different age and cultural groups.
Interfaces and systems must be intuitive, natural, and compatible with our emotional status. Combining emotion and technology should be part of every design process. An increasing mobility of humans throughout the globe, due to business or study reasons, has brought family members to spend most of their time apart from each other. F+R Hugs could fill this gap. Humans need physical contact with each other. Technology should allow for a fullfilling Human-Human Interaction.

An infant may sink into depression and die without the closeness of her mothers body (studies refer of increased sudden infant death syndrome if children are not being hugged during the first 40 days of life). Adults, especially elderly people living far away from their families, deprived of tactile contact for a long period of time will tell you just how depressing it feels. A hug, a handshake, a pat on the back, and a kiss are all very important and bring us close to others, reconnect us to our memories and accentuates our present perceptions. There is an increasing need of human contact, not only for fun and pleasure, but also for improving healthcare and solve learning disabilities.

Process
We involved the final users in participatory design sessions from the early stage of the design process. This technique allows for faster refining of concepts and prototypes and gives the possibility to bring desirable products to market in a shorter time and with better results. During the testing users reported that when hugging they felt positive energy, love and happyness, safety, pleasure and stress relief. Users reported the happyness of being accepted and desired by others that is central to most of human activities.
A taxonomy of hugs developed during the research shows that hugs come from people that take care of us: mothers, sisters, fathers, grandparents, friends. A hug makes us perceive the tangible presence of the other person, the closeness contributes a sensation of warmth and relaxed harmony. During the hug positive natural chemicals get released within our body, our blood pressure regularizes, and stress soothes. Rhythmic hugs to let a child fall asleep produce soft vibrations that resonate and calm.
Additional bodystorming sessions were done at every stage of the design process. Users tried various kinds of textiles and materials such as sponges, balloons and the likes, wearing them on their body, inside their clothes or outside existing ones. During special hugging sessions we mapped the position of participants hands on the others body. Major intensity points were identified on upper arms, on the upper back part of the torso, around the waistline, neck, shoulders, and hips. In these strategic spots we placed our soft technological sandwiches containing the hugging output actuators.

Keywords
Wearable computing, telecommunication technology, fashion design, human-human interaction, design and emotion

Applications
TelecommunicationFashion designDomoticsHealthcare