Multi-disciplinary Collaboration in Fashionable Technology

Current clothing is always in an analogue state. That is why a wearer hardly expects changes in a garment physically or visually. However, advanced wearable technologies make clothing responsive anytime and anywhere. Fashionable technology can be an extensive medium to express personal emotions, experiences, and visual preferences.

Clothing played a critical role as the one of the most essential elements of human living. When fashion meets technology, the role of a garment can be more than merely covering or protecting a body but if a garment looks like a device, not clothing, most people would not be attracted to it. The wearable can be helpful to a user depending on what technologies can be used to create it. Therefore, wearable designers should think about technology as well as style.

According to Sabine Seymour, fashionable wearable is much more than fashion since it provides wearers with interactive interface plus fashion what we understand it as a style, dress, adornment, and clothing.

When wearables are more focused merely on technology without fashionable senses, they will be exactly the same as early wearable computers. As Seymour mentions, if fashionable technology will concentrate on both technology and style, it can be an innovative medium of self-expression. The important thing is that the clothing is a supportive medium that does not outshine the wearers, and technology can give life to the clothing.

If the technology that is applied to clothing is getting supple, more flexible, and even becoming invisible, designers will be able to design an advanced wearable with great style.

Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration in Fashionable Technology

Designing fashionable wearables requires a collaboration between technology professionals (e.g. engineers) and fashion professionals (e.g. fashion designers). A systematic method for realizing this collaboration would increase the number of examples, and serve as a facilitator for the widespread use of wearable technologies. However, developing a systematic collaboration method is difficult, because technology professionals and fashion professionals have different approaches towards wearable technologies (KANER, COŞKUN, 2019)