Emotional Clothing: the smart garments that change colour based on your mood
A Polish designer has launched a clothing collection that change colour depending on your body temperature, stress levels, movements, and even emotions.
Made by Kraków-based designer and scientist Iga Węglińska, the Emotional Clothing range was designed around one item: a bodysuit that grows lighter or darker thanks to smart materials in the chest lining, which track the body’s movement and breathing rhythms.
“Even today, we still think about clothing only through the filter of fashion, seeing it as an aesthetic shell,” Węglińska told The Calvert Journal. “People forget about its technical powers, the way clothing helps us regulate temperature or even survive.”
Węglińska was inspired to make her conceptual collection after coming across philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers, who write about the human need for tools and objects to supersize the mind and aid the thinking process — an idea that extends to wearable tech.
Węglińska’s interest in smart textiles started with her PhD dissertation, which explored the interaction between humans and objects via new sensory technologies. As part of her graduate project, she made textile samples that reacted to psycho-physiological changes in the body and tested them on a focus group. “The sensors changed colour with every laugh, conversation, scream or whisper, or each time they made contact with skin,” the designer explains. While the collection won’t be available for the public, Węglińska’s plans to make more wearable tech in the future, expanding into VR, smart footwear, and making garments that help people with certain disabilities.
