iHalo: Fashion Learns From The iPod

Last December, PSFK predicted that one of the key trends for 2005 would be iHalo: the direct and indirect impact of the iPod on other sectors. A report in the New Scientists last week highlighted how the iPod is changing the way the fashion industry looks at technology and apparel.

Can you imagine putting your address book and photo album on in the morning along with your socks? Or how about using a "3D printer" to make your own shoes on demand? How about clothes peppered with plastic LEDs that let you change the fabric’s pattern at will? These are just some of the bizarre predictions coming from an unlikely research partnership between the London College of Fashion (LCF), based in London’s übertrendy Soho district, and the staid UK telecoms firm BT…. the stupendous success of the Apple iPod has proved that technology can also be fashionable.

Ian Pearson, BT’s futurologist at its research lab near Ipswich, Suffolk, says advances in organic electronics - conducting and semiconducting plastics - are finally going to allow gadget-stuffed garments to handle that most violent of environments: the automatic washing machine.

New Scientist
<via Agenda Inc>

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