Embedded - 61: I Want Programmable Pants

Episode Date: July 30, 2014

Jen Costillo (@rebelbotJen) brings Fashion Professor Kyle Chan to discuss wearables from a different perspective. California College of the Arts' Summer Series: Design of Wearables. Jen and Kyle's session isFashionably Practical on Wedneday, August 6th, 2014 8:15pm-10pm in San Francisco. Sparkfun conductive ribbon and thermochromatic pigment (blue) Athos athletic body monitoring Cute Circuit's photonic couture Smoke dress (neat!) Necomimi: thought controlled cat ear headband Reebok Checklight for detecting concussions and the Adafruit teardown Hövding scarf airbag for cyclists

Welcome to Embedded, the show for people who love gadgets. I'll be your host this week, and I have two guests. Jen Castillo returns, which means we'll be talking about some embedded software. And Jen brings along Kyle Chan, an instructor at California College of the Arts in the fashion program. Combining embedded with fashion must mean we're going to talk about wearables today. Hi Jen, thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me back. Hi Kyle, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Could you tell us about yourself? So I'm an adjunct professor in the fashion department at the California College of the Arts. And I also teach at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

I teach in fashion, product development, visual communications, and interior design sometimes, and also graphic design. And the two of you are teaching a class together at the Design of Wearables, some sort of summer program? What's that? It's a two-week program where it's a series of workshops, some of which are hands-on. Those are primarily on the weekend. But during the week, it's a lot of professors and other people who have done wearables sharing their expertise in a particular area. There's also a series of panels there where you can come in and have a panel discussion with a group of people from different disciplines. So we have some big name companies like Samsung coming in, but also people like Switch Embassy, like Laura Grant. And I'm trying to remember the other name off the top of my head. What is Switch Embassy? Switch Embassy is a smart clothing or smart accessory design group that has come up with a couple of interesting items.

One is a high-end handbag that can change colors over time. It's made out of leather. It really looks nice, and you can basically, you know, just say what color you want it to be in the cutouts. So it looks really interesting. So today I want my leather purse to be pink and tomorrow I want it to be blue and that's okay with you? Yes. Yes. No, no, that's not okay with you it's not real so it is it it is we've seen demos of it we've seen actual demos of it yeah and then um the same company also has i don't remember what the name of the shirt is that they call it do you remember what it is

i don't remember they have a woman's t-shirt and a men's t-shirt as well and it um features a photonic display that which you can customize and but what's really interesting about it is the fabric is actually really um flexible photonic display does this just mean the shirt is covered in leds it's cover okay so it's covered in leds which as we already know is horribly gaudy um but they they've used their fabric technology to make it just very um easy very you know very washable and kind of kind of um you know usually when you see like a lot of the light up shirts from the last 20 years, they're really clumsily made. There's only one or two light panels.

This has like basically very seamless, like you can't discern where exactly the LED is. Right. And then you can use your phone to download a new picture. So you can have an animated picture on your chest of a cowboy or a twitter. Platypus. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you can probably, I mean, once you have that, you can start doing all sorts of things. You can tweet and have whatever your tweet is on your shirt.

Yeah. That would get me in trouble at work. Probably. Well, what's interesting about it is the amount of space that it takes on the shirt itself. Because I think the older ones, you know, they were little pieces you could attach and they were much smaller. And this takes up quite a bit of it, the front area of the shirt, at least, you know, two thirds to three quarters of it. Oh, yeah, it was it was a pretty impressive size compared to other products. Was it heavy? Didn't look heavy. I mean, I tried on. They didn't really let us touch it.

Yeah. Are LEDs the new sequins? Because if so, I have some ideas. Kyle, did you want to take that question? No. No? I believe on the trends for this coming fall sequence didn't make it again lemay may have made it did lemay make it i don't know i think fashion trends are harder than technology trends for sure i think that at some point, some type of metallic trend comes in. And it can be

very shiny or very matte. You know, there might be a trend coming around. I mean, they cycle, but I don't know sequins. I'm not a fan. If you can control the shimmer of the sequins, like, you know, maybe maybe just like you want like a little sequin trim or led trim as opposed to like the whole thing getting back to the subject and i recognized the whole sequin led thing was my fault but so okay so the california college of arts is putting on the Design of Wearables Summer Series. A bunch of classes, two weeks, evenings, and weekends. Kyle, are there any of them you're planning to attend?

No, I haven't signed up for anything yet. And I was looking at it the past couple of days, and I was looking at one called Inspiring Creative Strategies for Wearables. And they have two versions, one for brand that has a brand focus and one that has a design focus. And I think I'm interested in that. I'm mainly interested in anything that, you know, talks about new materials. New fabrics, new threads, new metals? I don't know yeah there is a focus on new materials and any of those i mean really i think that's an area that's uh going to grow uh there's a lot

happening there um so i'm actually quite interested in that area and so am I, because I feel like that's the area that's really an unknown for not only technologists, but in some ways the fashion side of the industry. All that stuff is kept pretty secret. There's places like Clothing Plus, and I'm trying to remember the name of the other company I found that specializes in e-textiles. But they don't tell you how that works. Well, there's the conductive fabric. And I've played with the conductive thread a bit. But what do you mean e-textiles? What do you mean?

So stuff that is already integrating in the conductive properties um of the that are necessary for example there are conductive wire um you know the um oh jen brought some conductive yeah sorry what is this it's conductive ribbon and it has four channels this is four channel yeah this is four channel and you can use it to attach um four different signals. Just like the ribbon that usually lines my Oxford collared shirts. It's like the inside where the buttons go. Yeah, so maybe kind of maybe a gross grain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kind of maybe a little gross grain type ribbon-y stuff, but it just has this conductive channel on the inside. It's the first time it's not looked like it came from the electrical world. This looks like it came from the fashion world. It's not pretty and floofy, but it's not a wire anymore. Even the conductive thread feels like wire. It doesn't bend in quite the same way. Depending on which one you get, there's some embedded silver in there,

and over time it wears and flakes away. You can't wash those things. You can wash it. Well, you can, but... It's just not every week. Yeah. So this one I got from SparkFun. So it is readily available, and they have the headers,

so you can crimp your own. But I know Kyle probably has some other examples of e-textiles. I don't have any right now. And she can't hand them to me, so it's not as cool for me. Well, so there's, what were you going to say, Kyle? No, I was going to say, I mean, that is the area where I would like to go in and really order a lot of textiles and see which ones are more conducive to creating fashion. I mean, there's one thing with a ribbon and a ribbon is actually a great way to add a particular function to textile that's already woven. But we are looking at possibly

going into knitting and being able to create some knitted circuit boards and things like that. So I don't know. I mean, I think that this is the area that I would really like to delve into. And I think I'm probably going to be taking the steps to do that in the next, actually, I'm probably starting to do that right now. Yeah. I would say that Kyle and I, and I know some other people, we've bought heart rate monitors. The standard sports ones. Yeah, the one that goes around the chest. Yeah, yeah.

And we've taken the strap and we've peeled apart those straps just trying to figure out, you know, how this was put together. So, you know, you'll find a little bit of this similar ribbon, but you'll also find this plastic stabilizer with some conductive something in it just impregnated inside the plastic to enable that, to enable electrical circuits to go through. But that process is completely hidden. You know, we're just, we're guessing as to what's happening. In addition, there's companies that make conductive inks that you can then silkscreen on the design, but it's not clear how durable they are. So if you're silkscreening something on like, you know, like you would, you know, you're silk screening something on like, you know, like you would, you know, you're doing a shirt,

but this time you just print a circuit and then you can affix, you know, whatever the, you know, or sew in the circuitry or the components themselves on top of this conductive area. It's interesting, but I don't know how durable it's going to be long-term. Right. And I think that that is what I was getting at is getting a hold of this type of textile, whether it's in ribbon form or actual fabric or even trims or anything like that,

and really putting it to the test from a fashion perspective like sewing it up seeing how you know if somebody can wear it how it uh handles on fabric or if it's actually you know um if it drapes or anything like that and um and then you know running it through wash tests and things like that so i mean that's really exciting i'm really i i, you know, we're going to talk about your class in just a second. And I was pretty excited to hear about that. But I'm pretty excited to hear about that. It's not it's felt like so long. If you wanted to make a shirt that monitored your posture, something I've been playing with or shoes that lit up, which kids have. But I have dance shoes that do. And those are cool, but they're so hacked together. I don't never want to show anyone what they look

like. It's embarrassing. But now you have to come back in a few weeks and tell me what you found with all the materials, because now I'm super excited about it too. I think a lot of people are starting to realize that there's this black hole of knowledge around this area and only a select few have it. So I've noticed a lot more classes and workshops that are coming up around the e-textile area. And the one thing I did want to clarify is that Kyle alluded to is that e-textiles doesn't necessarily mean putting electronics or conductive anything inside the fabric. It can be something as simple and mundane as something that wicks a lot better

or cools the body more effectively. Oh, yeah, they have the technical cloths. Yes. So there's a really wide range of functionalities when people talk about e-textiles. Doesn't the e stand for electronic no i i don't i you know that i think i think that's one of the reasons why kyle and i wanted to work together um because when we first started out this was a challenge for us because

we we really do come from two separate worlds i can can sew, but not very well. And she doesn't really have a technical background. But what we wanted to share in this workshop was all the different things that we had to go through to make a wearable design, even if it was a costume. Okay, so your workshop, what is it called? Fashionably Practical Something Something. Fusing Fashion and Technology.

Just because I had to look it up, it's called Fashionably Practical Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration on Wearables. Just so you guys know, in case you wonder where you're supposed to be. I can't find the room. I can't find the name. We've been working on this so much that we finish each other's sentences at this point. For listeners, that's Wednesday, August 6th. It starts at 8.15pm and goes to 10pm. Right? Yeah. Okay. So,

title aside, clearly we're doing Fashionably Impractical, and I guess Kyle's the fashionably part, and you're the practical part? No, I think we're both practical. I think there's a misnomer. And both fashionable. Well, I'll try to wear pants that day, so.

I'm not going there. Don't come to the workshop then. What are you going to talk about, Kyle? So we're talking about the importance of cross collaboration between tech and fashion. In order to develop wearables. We'll be talking about how to understand each other's process. I mean, Jen and I definitely come from different worlds, but part of it is really kind of understanding how one works. I mean, we have our little clashes and everything, but in general, I mean, it's just a process that we go through so we we look at how I do things or how she does things and um we come together and solve a problem really so this workshop is going to be a little bit about um Jen's going to discuss the tech process and I'm going to discuss the fashion process and how things work and don't work for both.

Jen, will you give us a quick, what are you going to tell them about the tech process? I mean, most people listening, I suspect, kind of know a little bit about electronics, so that process is not as a black box. Right. I actually don't talk about it necessarily primarily as a process. I talk about it more from the point of view that within wearables and other miniaturized products,

that it's really important to focus on four skills, these four disciplines, which are mechanical, software, hardware, and I actually separate out RF into its own category, just because it's pretty rarefied. And because they all have to work together harmoniously and almost simultaneously in order to make the product work in the marketplace, I really talk about what's required from those disciplines. And then I give a brief nod to the process because the process isn't that much different than in the fashion world. Right.

The process, the design and, and construction or the manufacturing process or all of it. I would say all of it based on the, you know, going through and working with Kyleyle and you know because she does have industry experience um in fashion in fashion i mean kyle tell them who you worked for tell them who you worked for you you you have you know about you know how this stuff goes so

yeah the audience i worked at um levi's um strauss uh back in the 90s, mid 90s. I've also worked in accessory design as well. But back at Levi's, we did a lot of design to production. So I managed a lot of the process from drawing to prototyping to first samples and manufacturing. So that's pretty much where my actual mass market experience comes from. Yeah, and it's not that different in many ways from what we go through when we're creating a consumer product. So I feel like there's some parity there. And i think part of that's because we're actually you know both both parties are creating a physical product and so for the people who come who are

more fashion based you'll be giving them an introduction to the disciplines and what they're probably going to be looking for from those disciplines yeah basically how to know when someone's pulling your leg you You didn't mention manufacturing engineering. I didn't because I think of that as part of the process. I think that's something that all four disciplines have to deliver upon. But most of what we're trying to deliver, so we talk about the two different worlds. We propose a model for evaluating products, wearable products and smart clothing ideas. And then we do a couple case studies. And then finally, we're going to apply the model to

other people's ideas. So what we want, what we hope our audience has by the end of the class is, is a couple of ideas that they've evaluated in the class. They have a pretty good idea of whether it's going to work in the marketplace or not or where the problems are going to be. And then when they go to the hands-on workshop over the weekend, they can maybe get a prototype out of it. Well, going back to the different disciplines, Kyle, what are you hoping the technical folks who take your class come away with? What are the big challenges that, what are those clashes you had with Jen?

Well, in general, I think, well, with Jen, actually, I think most of the clashes are really, did we really have a lot of clashes jen i was waiting to hear what you were gonna say i was like go on i'm curious to hear i think jen is more like let's do this like this exactly and i'm more like let's try this and maybe i don't really have an idea about where it's going to go first and that that might be something that is very typical of a fashion designer. So I like to explore lots of ideas before I get focused. And I like to come up with lots of things before I actually get focused. And so I basically, once I edit, I develop that focus. And I think with Jen, I think she's extremely focused.

So I think that's sort of very typical of the two different worlds. Well, yeah, creative versus engineering. That does sound not, I mean, not everybody has exactly that, but that does sound kind of common. But I would point out that Kyle is incredibly practical. She's a very practical, from the fashion side, she's very straightforward and logical and direct. And I think that's, for me, it was very easy to work with Kyle

on our projects because I said, okay, this is the concept. We need to make sure that it's going to be, it'll work with multiple dancers and it'll be easy to take on and off and there's Jen specifying the product but we didn't have that much time is the problem no we didn't and I'm actually sort of the kind of person that just wants to get the job done basically um but working with Jen was actually pretty easy I mean we run into little problems and I consider them sort of, you know, roadblocks, but really more like not so much roadblocks, but more like speed bumps. But in fashion design, I think you have a, I was the tech liaison there because I had to sort of be the one know everything, obviously, but I can put one foot in both worlds, basically. And that part, I think, is really hard to find in the fashion industry, someone who can straddle the two sides.

It's hard to find in any industry. I think a lot more so in fashion. I think that there are a lot of people that sort of feel like the computer is an intrusion to a more organic way of working. So I think that's the biggest challenge there is to get someone who thinks that way to try and, you know, accept something that is, uh, in a wearable that will also sort of put a, uh, a stop or more of a, uh, slow down in, into their particular, very fast paced process. Um, the other thing that Kyle reminds me of this all the time is, you know, and she's, she said this already is that she throws a lot of stuff she kind of puts everything in the kitchen sink into into a into a into a piece of clothing

into a design and then you edit it and you see this over and over again if you watch project runway you know sometimes you hear like they don't know how to edit themselves they don't know how you know just gaudy it's awful not saying that that's what kyle is okay but dig it um but i feel like in in technology we don't like throw if it can't fit in the box it's it's probably cut pretty early on. Pretty early on, but not always. I mean, it makes it some pretty interesting product marketing. You're all like, oh, let's put this one thing here. I was like, oh, well, I'll just change the enclosure over here

and put a big bump on the side to make way for your who's a what's it over here. Don't worry, that's just a $60,000 tooling change. Yeah, you can't do that at the end. You do have to solidify the vision in the beginning. Yeah. So I think that's one thing that I think kind of, and we in tech, if we put everything we wanted, we'd have this big enclosure,

and then at the end we'd whittle it down. We're like, okay, well, I guess we need to retool and add on that additional tooling cost. It's just there's a difference in pricing i believe uh when you you know if you do that if you kind of like trim everything at the end so because there's all that is less the is more the agile way of software development no i i think you get i mean if kyle take this one. I think you guys are pretty waterfall to me, but maybe you could elaborate on that, like about the process. Well, I'm not really sure what you mean.

I was wondering if we were really going to throw Kyle under the bus of software development methodologies. Okay, so Kyle, so what did you describe, describe like how, you know, what it's like to design a line of clothes for a season? Okay. Not the emotional part, just the... Emotional part. Well, I cry in the corner if things don't work out, that kind of thing.

No, basically we do a lot of research. In general, the research can be previous sales. We also research maybe what, and I should explain, I used to work in kids wear. So boys wear 8 to 20, which is your teenager, preteen. 8 to 20? 8 to 20, which is your teenager, preteen. 8 to 20? 8 to 20. That's sizes.

Oh. Not ages. There are sizes, correct. Sorry. I'm like, they kind of still act the same, but. Really? Matched a giraffe with a rhino. In general, I mean, when i teach uh we go through basically the same process is we look at a lot of things we could look at uh social trends we look at history

we look at current events uh we um look at high-end trends um and sometimes we talk to some people from the forecasting services and look at trends that are coming up you know two a year and a half two years from now and sort of kind of pull from all of those things and distill a particular kind of theme and this theme again has a lot to do with how that particular customer will feel like if they're wearing you know this particular collection so from there we go to basically technical sketches or hand-drawn sketches which are the the garments and we add all the details and we pull that together you know through again we compare it back to the themes and see if it has a particular voice.

Am I losing you guys? No, no, that makes sense. So in general, from there on, those sketches go, I work with a pattern maker and she starts creating the patterns for those garments. And this line, I mean, in one season, we would have something up to, you know, 50 to 100 pieces. So that's a lot of pieces, if you count all the different colors and all the different fabrics. So we would probably develop, you know, 25 to 35,

but in the end we'll end up with more because of again changes in fabrics so um let's see uh from there on let me refer a second you have so 50 different pieces you've designed how many of those will end up in the marketplace um oh god that's a good question um probably about 60 or 65 that's not so bad. Probably about 60% or 65%. That's not so bad. When we used to do toy lines at LeapFrog, we would have a pretty big, even at the end, we'd cut toys after they had done the initial prototypes. I don't have enough skews available then we cut things out so when you're designing for the marketplace you have a fixed number of things you can release yes and some of them have to be shirts some of them have

to be pants yeah i mean we we worked that one year the ratio is like three tops or three types of tops to bottoms um depending on the in the industry and women's wear might be a little bit different but generally generally we sell more tops than bottoms come on everybody's like yeah i know i don't wash my jeans every time i wear them exactly it didn't even occur to me it's a ratio okay so you have 50 and then you you go down some due to design decisions and then maybe up some due to fabric changes fabric options right okay i feel like i just learned a lot about why there was you know what you know what does the fox say shirts that came out just by understanding oh they are looking at media trends and so forth i'm like okay

you know that's interesting because because something might be in production. I mean, when we're designing, well, at least at Levi's, we designed a year and a half ahead. But every so often something would come up, say we wanted to make a Fox shirt or what does the Fox say shirt. And we would add it in at the last minute for the season that's already um being delivered and um we would probably hire people locally to run these t-shirts and we would add it in and deliver it you know in 90 days or you know a couple of months that all sounds very familiar 18 month product cycle the occasional quick spin that you do for at an insanely high cost and low margin just so that your name is trendy right it sounds familiar yeah it's out

of really familiar but you know what's funny is like you know if they don't if i'm assuming kyle that if you don't meet that window if you don't make that you know if you don't make it in time well you have a bunch of you know might as well you might as well have released your clothes in the 70s and it's like christmas and consumer products if you don't release on time to get it in the market at the right time you might as well not have played this year well so the difference in fashion design is we have deliveries within a season so if it doesn't make it to the first delivery it will go to the second delivery however we design different deliveries because things have to change on the floor

right so every deliveries like seasons so within the season we might have multiple deliveries but that doesn't mean that you can just throw something in afterwards, you know, just because we didn't make production. In general, you have to deliver what, you know, you have to make that deadline, basically. Because the stores are planning on so many different kinds of shirts, so many different SKUs themselves. Contracts have been written, space has been made. And as things sell, so you put them on the floor, and as they sell, you bring in new merchandise. So that's why there's this delivery system. Yes.

Okay, so we've been talking about wearables and fashion, but we're going to go back to wearables a bit. And my question now is, what do you mean by wearables? Isn't my outfit, unadorned with any electronics, wearable? You are, in fact, wearing it. Exactly. And therefore, by definition, it is wearable. But we keep saying wearables.

But we've shortened it. We've assured it. It's electronic wearables. E-wearables. E-wearables. E-wearables. So when you guys talk about wearables for this class, what do you mean? I think we mean a couple things.

Kyle, did you want to take this one? Well, yeah. I mean, wearables is sort of a catch-all phrase for things like accessories, e-textiles, things like that. Or, sorry, smart watches. Smart clothing. Smart watches. Smart clothing clothing too correct and i think you know most of the focus has been in accessories but if we sort of separate smart clothing or kind of look at the subcategory of smart clothing we look at things that um

that are garments that have uh communicating and sensing capabilities and i think that um that area is probably one of the ones that are that people are most interested in so these are the body monitoring things well it could be yeah i mean that that's that that's that's what's compelling people to spend that type of money to buy that product is the idea that somehow will make you thin, smarter, fantastic, fabulous. Isn't this always the goal of fashion? I think there's utilitarian reasons, like this covers my butt, so now I can go outside and not get picked up by the cops, except in San Francisco, where it's okay. What?

I don't know. I think the goal of fashion is that it's accepted, and there's a spectrum in that area, all the way from high fashion to sort of mass budget type fashion. So in terms of smart clothing, I think we're talking about something a little bit different because it is specialized. It is something that I think a lot of athletic wear companies are really spending the time in researching and, you know, developing. But in fashion itself, I think it's an area that is just where only a few companies are really trying it out. I think it's still an unknown. I think fashion's a little bit behind in

that area. Well, and with the Fitbits and even the posture monitors, they don't really seem to have much to do with fashion for all that they're called wearables. I think there's some of it. I think you and I have talked about Fitbit before in terms of that's the product you get, so you never show it off. You keep it small, you keep it uninteresting.

People wear them on their wrists and seem proud and stuff. And shine is another example of something that looks very beautiful but uninteresting. That's the necklace-based pedometer. Or you can have it on your wrist. And it comes in different colors. I was looking last night. I was almost tempted to get their cobalt blue one. Oh, no, storm.

It's called storm. It was a beautiful there's a new ringly that had really quite pretty rings that would light up with different patterns depending on who was calling you assuming you didn't have your phone in front of you yeah somehow are these the sort of things that are the crossover of interest or are there other areas of wearable and fashion and technology all getting together? So for the most part, the history within the tech community has been accessories. If you want to look legit, you're going to make an accessory. Why? Because that's at least somewhere in your realm of control.

Fabric, the technology isn't there yet to make something that's going to be durable and and and work with everyone's lifestyle and accessories are something you can kind of throw on and take afterthoughts there and you can wear them as much as you want yeah i mean if you if you get you don't wash your you you don't yeah you can wear it every day but if you get a shirt you can't it's yeah it's unintrusive by comparison so i think that's part of the reason why smart clothing hasn't really caught on now there's a company called ethos probably mispronouncing on redwood city that that's really trying to do um i think the first smart clothing that i think will will actually make a

dent it's fashion not fashion focused it's fitness focused. And what it is, is you have the shirt and the pants, and they're very form fitting, and they look nice, they're black. And you fit these little pods into the top and bottom. And that connects to some sensors to measure how hard your muscles are working, your breathing, your heart rate, and it then sends all that data to your phone. Now, it's not officially released, but it's a couple hundred bucks just for a set of the clothing and the pods. Well, and they look like the pants look like biker shorts. These are not pretty. But they do also look like, in the example they're showing on their website, he's lifting weights and it's showing that his shoulder is in

the correct position yeah okay um so i i think that's compelling although it seems to me that you know if you're if you're if you're not making six figures you're not going to make you're not going to buy one set of these and uh and you kind of need to buy several sets of these. Yeah, that's the thing is you're going to sweat in this. Yeah, I want to wash it all the time. All the time. I'm not the sweatiest person in the world, but I still need to wash things. Ooh, I hope that makes it for a title. I'm not the sweatiest person in the world.

I don't know. I'm wrestling for it. So sports is a very reasonable direction for these wearables but they aren't very fashion i they don't scream fashion to me kyle what do you think is the direction technology is headed well um that's kind of a loaded question it's such a pretty big question. Right now, a good example of fashion and tech combined is a company called Cute Circuit. They're based in London, and they're actually the ones responsible for that Twitter dress. So the dress, that was a haute couture dress that was commissioned for, I can't remember. Was it Katy Perry?

No, no, that was Nicole Scherle scherzinger and i'm probably mispronouncing the name and she wore it for um i think a london-based um mobile companies um inaugural or some kind of event i can't remember it right now um so they have a website and they feature both haute couture, one of a kind pieces and also designer level pieces. So they have a display mini skirt, an eye mini skirt, basically, that can be programmed through your iPhone. And that's the skirt that Katy Perry wore. But they also have dresses and pants there as well. And I think they're a good example of the type of photonic garments. And if you get a chance to look at it, you'll see it's pretty fashionable.

It's still dealing with very classic shapes um and in terms of the future i mean well i'm gonna go to cute circuit for a second they have a whole collection called samsung which you know well samsung really wants to get into wearables oh they do they they they been talking, like I said, they're going to be at CCA during this festival of fashion and technology. That's not the name of this thing at all, but that's what I'm calling it for right now. They also came last spring to do a workshop,

a two-day workshop with our students in the fashion design department. Yeah, they are very eager. Yeah. And Cute Circuit has a whole another line for mercedes so when you're driving your car your jacket lights up appropriately this is awesome you know you know what's nice is that so i i i i don't think i've ever told told Elda's story. I'm sure Kyle. So it's about the year 2000. And I was spending my time buying light up clothing and whatnot from a company called Cyber Dog in the UK. And I was on a bunch of cyber goth boards during that time. Because that's what you do. You just want to buy up all kinds of cyber-y type clothing. And I really wanted to design some programmable pants. Pants that would just say, you know, you could customize it just like this,

just like what they're saying here. Programmable pants. Yes, I want programmable pants. I want to. Try to hold it back it's well you know what it gets funnier because the boards i was talking on were based in the uk and when you tell somebody that you want to make programmable pants with leds all over them they're like don't you want someone to see them because for them pants are knickers but i digress i mean that that that's obvious you know they're like why don't you maybe you should make them trousers and i'm like

i mean not being quite aware but it's really nice to see that somebody is actually making this work and it's still not washable worth worth anything no it's not washable at all nothing couture is and did you check the prices no the website design alone told me how much it was gonna be right well that i-mini skirt is up at six thousand three hundred dollars sure not what i'd rather have well you could wear it while you're in while you're in your car exactly okay so we kyle you were headed to what is the direction technology is headed it sounded like you may have more of an answer than that than the initial well in terms of fashion um i i really think fashion isn't really there yet i mean i think the technology or can you ask me that question again

where the technology is going meaning that the tech or the the actual fashion industry and technology? What parts of technology are going to be used by the fashion industry? What's exciting to you as a designer regarding the technology that exists or is purported to soon exist? Well, actually, I think Jen mentioned it earlier. What's exciting is anything that is conductive or has display capabilities where the material is flexible and supple. Flexible displays, yes. Yeah, flexible and supple. I've been waiting for, we're talking like 15 years now,

I've been waiting for this. That's at, we're talking like 15 years now. I've been waiting for this. That's why I got into e-ink to begin with, was like waiting for this time. You know, there's all these books where they talk about flimsies and it's rolled up displays. Yes. I mean, I had a business plan

that was centered around a flimsy display. But I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, just because we're, you know, I don't think enough companies are demanding that, you know, e-textiles get more, either more cost effective or ready,

you know, ready to go that the, that it's something that you can make a product that will be worthwhile making unless you're charging a ridiculous amount for it. And then I also think that the components that we're using, sensors and what have you, and some of the manufacturing capabilities, they need to shrink down. They need to also become more cost effective.

And more robust. Able to be watched. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. I also feel like it's more robust able to be oh yeah yeah right yeah yeah i also feel like um it's gonna get worse as well because um i think a lot of people are going to put their money into things that are really flashy um sometimes literally you mean you mean you mean

you mean when you say flashy you mean sequiny program of pets ugly and i feel like fashion at least in terms of technology it really needs to be sort of subtle yeah i understand until that actually happens and we accept it i think we're probably going to see a lot of flashy display type things and you know i'm not necessarily against that i just think that you know for I'm not necessarily against that. I just think that, you know, for now, things have to kind of look like they, you know, more bang for your buck, basically. Because there are a lot of bucks involved. Right, exactly. Exactly. I mean, we're looking at $200, $300, $150 for a t-shirt, probably. $6,000 for a skirt.

Well, you know, come on. I think there's some things. We now have some more EKG and other types of sensors that we could possibly be using to show emotions to people who can't read emotions very readily. There's other things that we could do in the social space with clothing

and accessories that I think would be more beneficial and less about fashion, less about looking ridiculous. Do you think anybody would wear a shirt that showed when they were lying? I don't know. You know what? I think that would probably end up being an art installation sooner than it would be a

day-to-day wear thing. Art installation, this kind of brings up, San Francisco has a lot of the technology and art merging. And Kyle, do you think that technology and fashion collide more at CCA than at other fashion institutes? No, I don't think it necessarily collides. I think it's just not as explored as we would like it to be. I think there are a lot of people at CCA, including Christopher Ireland,

who is the head of the MFA department, who is the one that put together these wearable workshops, who's really interested in bringing it more to CCA. I know that our project with Samsung involved both the fashion department and the industrial design department. So I think that it's not necessarily a collision. It's more of a kind of changing a way of thinking. And I think that everybody at CCA is actually really eager to take this on. I think the part of craft and design will lend itself really well to technology. And I think that all the departments could look at each of their areas and see how they could maybe branch out and add a technological aspect to it. I think that's actually something probably that'll be happening soon enough because there's a lot of conversations there about it. Neat.

Jen, you brought me some other things I see over there. And I wanted to ask you about the future of wearables. And I think that it's related to the sensors in, what's the blue thing? The blue thing? The blue thing is a packet of heat-sensitive dye. And what you do- I totally had a hyper-colored t-shirt in high school. I also had a hyper-colored t-shirt, which it seemed it only worked on my boobs

and just everywhere else. But I also, I don't know if anyone, if you grew up out here in California, then you probably never had a pair of these, but I had more than a couple pairs of these in the Midwest, and they were called Freaky Freezies. And what you would do is they look normal. You can see the commercial on YouTube, actually.

It's pretty dorky. And what you would do is you would put on these gloves, you know, because you go outside and play in the snow. And as it got cold, an image would appear on the gloves. And, yes, that was a whole lot of marketing. Wow. That's cool. i've never heard of these the freaky freezies we can we can watch the youtube commercial together anyway so uh this is

this is you know kind of color chromatic dye that allow you know this one's in blue so as as it gets warm as you saw when i came in it was all white and i was like oh it must be really warm out and what happens is as you apply heat to it it changes color so you can use that as a way to indicate on clothing that there's a temperature change I also have the reason why I bought that is because I bought a bunch of heat conductive pads that I was that are that are in this very thin kind of mylar flexible matrix yeah little heating elements yeah and um what I was going to do is I was going to make uh something that I was going to make heated grips or something like that for my motorcycle but it's cheaper just to go buy them so I was going to do like some sort of heat shirt or something. Isn't that technology used a lot in the toy industry?

Making kids burn? Yeah, it totally is. The heat sensitive or temperature sensitive dye. Oh, I know. Actually, I've seen it a little bit, but not much. Where like you... Paint on makeup on the babies? Yeah, or that you apply water onto a doll and it shows up.

Yeah, that's what I meant, not actual changes. Hair color changes, or not. Not actual babies. Because it was the thing. I'm sorry to cut you off, but there was that... I remember there was a Barbie that you would... Yeah. Yeah, that you would, like, put water on her hair

and then her little pink streak would come up. Right. Yeah. Well, that's the heat sensitive dye but with the with the little heaters i want to like make a jacket that only says something when the heaters are on because it uses the heat sensitive dye but i can't really think of too hot to touch hot ass leds are on and then like in the front there would be but i mean you do realize there

are heated jackets and pants that are primarily used by motorcyclists and people living in cold regions yeah i live in california we never have to be hot here if you don't want to i guess um one of the other things that i brought so i have some stuff that's very clearly lily pad like vibration boards and lily pad is the whole system and it's got an arduino uh processor it's got some other processor bases there's an mp3 version of it that you could just has an sd mini sd micro sd and you could just play mp3 and they're designed to be sewn in um they have little holes so that you can not have to solder anything. You just use the conductive thread.

And this is a buzzer. What else do you have over there? So this is another one that I have, which is this little strip. And I'm really eager to get a chance to use it in something because it's just a long strip with silver and mylar and what have you and just two leads coming out of it. And it's a bend sensor so we'll tell you how much you're bending and it's really just um it's really just a series of resistance or resistors in there and so as you bend they kind of close off yeah force sensitive resistance sort of thing

yeah okay um and so i was thinking about making a sit-up pants so you can find out how many sit-ups you're doing oh no cheating no cheating um and then you have this light sensor for the lily pad and so you could have a light sensor that when it got dark your jacket lit up and so that's what i did with with kyle in in our costumes is i had the concept was uh representing two planets one was a red planet like Mars and the other one was more kind of like an airy gaseous planet. So for the red planet,

I put an accelerometer on it and that would light up different types of different lights on there and different patterns depending on how you were moving or how fast you were moving or if you were moving it and not at all. And with the light one if there was light or dark it would it would also flash the leds in a different pattern and these were costumes for a particular event this these were

costumes for a dance piece that i had um i had um i was showing up in san Francisco at Cowell Theater, wow, two years ago, three years ago? Yeah, that's a little while ago. That was a while ago, yeah. And this was modern. This was modern. Modern dance. I know there was some ballet in there, too. Yeah, but Kyle did an awesome job with making these costumes work for, you know because we they were two twos and we had

to use all the all the regular design principles that you would expect in fashion to make sure that they work you know if i if i have to replace a dancer or we need to add something in that i don't have to do all these electronics over and over and over again so one of the hardest parts of wearables i think is its battery need. We want these wearables to last all day for as long as we're wearing these outfits. Too many LEDs does not work. Too many LEDs doesn't work. Even buzzers will drain your batteries pretty fast.

Do you see anything coming that way that's going to help us? The regenerative battery world, at least for wearables, I would really love. I mean, you can put solar. You could figure out a way to do, I know you talked to MicroGen a while ago. I was going to say MicroGen with the vibration and energy harvesting. It would be great. But yeah, you're absolutely right. You can't put that many LEDs on this stuff and expect you to have a lot of battery life, which totally means all those phototonic sets of clothing that we were talking about are pretty much screwed.

Unless you want to have people have three or four C-cells taped to their waist. Oh yes, it's just the C-cells that are taped to their waist. I'm sorry, D-cells. Are you playing with the die? I am totally playing with the die. I put it on my very warm computer and then it's white on that side and blue on the other, and it's very amusing. It comes in red, too, I think. I don't know what I'd do with it, because I do remember my hypercolor shirt, and I loved it when I had it, because it was all trendy. Yeah.

Well, it probably wasn't by the time I had one. No one got the hypercolor pants or shorts, because it would just be crotch. Your crotch is warm. Thanks for that. Yeah, you're welcome. So you two teamed up initially through the dance project, the costuming. And how did you decide to teach this class? How did we decide?

Well, people were interested in how we went about doing these costumes. Because you managed to get into each other's worlds pretty well. I mean, it's hard to find experts in other industries who can work with technology people. And I bet it's hard somewhat

for the fashion industry to figure out technology people who are patient bet it's hard somewhat for the fashion industry to figure out technology people who are patient enough to take their time. I think the patience thing, I think Kyle's just really patient with me. For a long time. For a long time. We've known each other, I think, what, 2002?

Something. So long enough to be friends before you started working together. Yes. And also, I have a lot of appreciation for her work. I don't know if she remembers this. I hope she... Did you?

You can tell me, honestly, if you threw this away. I sewed a bag for her one time. Like, it was supposed to... I remember that bag. And I gave it to you. And, like, I don't think I realized that you really did teach fashion at that time. And I gave it to you. And I don't think I realized that you really did teach fashion at that time. And I gave it to you. It was like nylon.

It was kind of like a shoulder man purse type thing. And I gave it to you. Yep. What happened to that? Really? No, I moved since you gave me that. And I remember that back. And I left it there.

It was really funny because, I mean, to me that it was really funny because I mean to me it was really about the effort and the fact that you know not everybody can just sit down and sew on nylon yeah it's hard it's not easy at all so I totally appreciated it because I mean it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the best sewn piece. And you knew that already, right? Yes. No, it's a shock. Oh, no. Oh, my God.

All the thread was buckling. Yeah, it was. But it's something that hasn't happened to me when I'm trying new materials on the sewing machine. I mean, you really have to kind of play around with it and make sure that the tension is right for the particular fabric. And that fabric in and of itself is so weird. It's ripstop nylon. So it's really, really, really thin. So it might as well, you know, act a little bit like silk.

But it's also really strong. So it kind of does both things. And sewing it is not easy. uh i'm gonna let her off the hook on that one it was very diplomatic what she said and i think we lost the audience so getting back to wearables yes what are some of the craziest wearables you've found you want to you want to say you want to say what what was the craziest i think jen wants to talk about fund aware fund aware do you what no no no do you do you before i go into that do you want to talk about uh crazy wearables um i wouldn't necessarily call it crazy um i would say i would call it artistic i think anuk whippet's um smoke dress

it's a dress she um created using uh 3d textiles and it's sort of a an art piece um and social commentary so you wear it and if somebody kind of you know encroaches upon your personal space it lets out this sort of smoke effect kind of makes you kind of like a ninja a smoky ninja i think it's i think that's really cool i think it doesn't use anything that lights up it has you know a particular function whether it's a safety thing or um or or a social commentary type of thing i think it's really cool but i think um jen continually wants to mention the fundaware underwear and i've hit the website already and we're not going to cover that one But I think Jen continually wants to mention the Funderwear underwear. And I've hit the website already, and we're not going to cover that one in detail.

Well, so I think some of that came from, there was a video game for PS2. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but the guy who made it has made several other ones that are similar to that, where you basically are making music by attacking the enemy. The drum pants? No, enemy the drum pants no not the drum heads but i think that is also pretty awesome drum okay so so so anyway so in the video game they had this add-on where you could just buy the the the bass underwear for your associate i guess and and then whenever you hit the bass on the beat because it was very techno-y um these all

this all be in the show notes guys um you would get a little pulse but that's not that that was a while ago but now there's drum pants and you can buy drum pants now and that's where you have you can like slap your leg and and you can put these sensors wherever you want in your clothing and it'll make a drum set so it's midi compatible so you could it doesn't even have to be a drum if you don't want it to be and you can you know you could you know be your one man band like you can go up and do a comedy routine and then when the jokes hit you could hit like a hi-hat or a drum roll and then everyone will understand that that's where the funny was in case they missed it. Only in San Francisco.

Right. Are the speakers part of the drum pass? I think it comes out of your phone. Okay. What did you... After, after. We really haven't talked about games at all. No, but there's the Neko Mimi ears. Oh, right.

Those are the ones... From NeuroSky. And they go on your head like a headband. With a lot of batteries. And the ears supposedly are controllable by your emotions and thoughts and brain yeah brain pattern supposedly supposedly yeah and they're little tiny motors and they wiggle back and yes those were ridiculous yes but you know game based well the sensors have been put into other products that allow you to exercise your mind to control like balls through a through a obstacle course

so they're really using the brain waves as a way um as something you control in order to um strengthen yourself or to focus and usually there's a certain uh i don't remember what the name is for the type of brain waves that that are used. Is it ECG? It was like alpha waves or something. I don't know. It sounds like something that would cause a superhero, but... I feel like the Zhejun Institute has just come into play here. But they're also supposed to be very good for meditation,

because those are the ones that come out with meditation. It's supposed to be good to help you focus yeah i i feel as if um with the nekomimi that if they figured out a way to make this technology not as ridiculous and geared towards the anime geek inside of us something that you could wear to a boardroom i i feel like this is the type of thing that would be beneficial for Asperger's or other socially awkward people to understand emotions or, or to be able to express emotions more effectively. That's an interesting, interesting application that probably wasn't something they were thinking about.

Yeah. I mean, I suppose like if you wanted to go into a boardroom, you could, you could you could instead of the cat ears you can they have devil horns they do have devil horns you can buy the devil horns and i guess that is more appropriate for business well this goes back to my t-shirt that tells when people you're lying and so you can tell people and then you then you hack the shirt and

then you hack the shirt and lie to them i feel like the days of Shadowrun are upon us. Kyle, you were asking about games, and we got onto Nekomimi, which isn't quite a game. Are there game-related wearables? Not that I know of. I mean, I think... Laser tag? Laser tag?

Oh, well, there is laser tag. So, you know, I'm not really that familiar with this area. I know that, and I don't know if we can really talk about this, because when Samsung was here, was at CCA at the workshop, one of our students came up with this great idea, which was to equip children's wear or children's clothing with some type of a kind of a game thing like laser tag, but it was a little bit more of a mobile thing.

So if you could play around and dance with them or do mimicking, that kind of thing as a game. So, I mean, I think there are areas where smart clothing could benefit by maybe going into gameplay or something like that. I have an idea. Yeah. So, Elle, didn't you do like the leapfrog frog that has like the alphabet or something on the belly of the thing?

What if you made it so it's just on the kid on his shirt and he just presses the buttons on the shirt? And there's like maybe a tiny speaker or something like that? That would be very, very possible. And like you just get new modules and download them in? Well, a lot of those already come with cartridges. Yes, but the shirt. Yeah, but you could rip that little guy apart and put it in yourself. The only thing I'm waiting for is some kind of a clothing that will mimic or will sense my Dance Dance Revolution moves.

Oh, yeah. Yes, I would like that. The shoes. Or a shirt or an overshirt that could be used for the yoga programs. But now we're back to health and fitness, and that's probably what that super expensive... Aethos stuff is going. Aethos stuff.

There's a lot of people that are really trying to move beyond the pedometer and go into how effectively you're doing the exercises. But they're expensive. They're expensive, and I am not convinced that they're going to do well. But fitness and health are the biggest areas. After that, it is the entertainment and social. But things like photonic, not as popular. I'm trying to think what some of the other areas were,

but yeah, those are the areas that we expect the most growth, and they're kind of behind, but the extra functional like smartwatches and Google Glass, those aren't necessarily doing as well. From an industry perspective. Remember that fashion also hits those industries the um uh medical side because a lot of the things that they do um develop um in that area are things that are um wearable as in actually worn um so um arm braces, leg braces, all those things are actually related to fashion in some way, more on the utilitarian side.

So I think that that's another area that fashion can also go into in the more sort of high-function, specialized areas that relate to uniforms and um and um medical military actually that reminds me that there's the reebok head check which was was a product that really blew me away in terms of actively looking at you know particularly for people who are in impact sports like football if you get hit if you get hit hard enough there's this little thing that you wear in a beanie under your helmet and if you get hit you you know you just grab the person and you look at the back of their head and it'll have a red or green light on it so if you've gotten hit hard enough or frequently enough it'll just say you know we have a red light and you're like you're done that's the rebook check light yeah and that uh i think there

was a teardown of that on on ada fruit's wearable wednesdays and it was it was good. I feel like there needs to be more things like that. There's also the Scully helmet, which is basically Google Glass, but for your motorcycle helmet. I'm intrigued by it because I always have problems looking around me and it would make me feel better. But my partner is really against that. He does not like it at all. There is also that accessory, that helmet that kind of pops up.

It looks like a scarf. Oh, yes. It's a fashion item, and you can wear it anywhere. It does not look like a helmet, so it's basically completely hidden. And actually, that is a great way of looking at something that looks fashionable. It doesn't look like what it is. And you can wear it while you're riding a motorcycle. And the moment there's an impact, it sort of acts kind of like a car.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Airbag. They call it the airbag for cyclists yeah exactly people people i there are lots of videos of that yeah it's pretty neat yeah yeah and and and i think that achieves that seamlessness of you know looking like a fashion item that nobody can tell what it is and you know has an extreme um function so what you're telling me is that LEDs are kind of like sequins and that that's not where we want to go with fashion. So this week, I'm always trying to get as much information

about where the industry is going. So I listened to some company's webinar on where wearables are going, and they said, not just once, but multiple occasions, that fashion is horribly behind and embarrassingly so and so that's what's making me really excited about taking part in this uh series of workshops is just in some way helping to get fashion out of this funk because i think tech is really trying a bunch of ideas or just throwing any old thing up there but in order for it to truly be adopted and be reasonable you need fashion and I think fashion is too long just really there's like well I'll just put some LEDs on and

we're done I completely agree with what Jen says and I think that's a good place for us to probably wrap up the show. Thank you both for being on. It was great to talk to you. Thank you for having us. Thank you very much. And my guests have been Kyle Chan and Jen Castillo. Remember, Kyle may have designed those pants you've been wearing since college. And the two of them will be giving a class at the California College of the Arts Design of Wearables Summer Series. The session is called Fashionably Practical, Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration on Wearables. Tickets are still available, and it will be going on for two weeks, starting, well, starting

real soon. If you'll be in San Francisco on Wednesday, August 6th, 2014, please do check out what Jen and Kyle are putting on. And I really appreciate them both for coming on. I'd also like to thank Christopher White for producing, and of course you for listening. I had many choices for final thoughts of fashion, but it's hard to get fashion and technology together. So let's hear from what Coco Chanel has to say about this. Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in

the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.