Alive-like Stylefree Companions offers a new way for people to have an active relationship with their garments.
An experimental scarf that transcends style, age and seasons breathes gently as it rests on your chest and heat tingles your neck. The more you wear your Stylefree scarf the more alive it becomes: its breathing pattern changes over time, heating up around your neck and adapting to how you wear and engage with it. As soon as you pick up your Stylefree scarf it becomes alive, prodding you to engage with it and acknowledge its presence, whether resting on your neck or keeping you company by your desk.
Nothing on the scarf betrays its technology as all elements are seamlessly integrated into its design. Reframing what our relationship with both fashion and technology can be, Stylefree provides moments of comfort, mindfulness and awareness and asks us to take a moment to reflect, be present and re-appropriate our relationship with technological artifacts.
We started by experimenting with different types of affordable, small and waterproof actuators that can be applied to different materials to convey the sense of aliveness.
The greatest challenges we faced were mostly related to time since each change in technology had a direct consequence on the process of the garment construction. Since the project is experimental in nature, as is the case with all wearable technology projects, it was difficult to make firm decisions on the technology early on, whether that involved the size and placement of fans, the construction of the heated pattern or battery selection.
Stylefree is conceived and produced by Principled Design in collaboration with Bless and Umbrellium to push the boundaries between the meaningful integration of design, craft, electronics and what we consider the limits of these practices to be.
The project is funded by Wear Sustain.
