Caroline Evans

The Emotional Wardrobe

Since the industrial revolution, fashion and technology have been linked through the textile and manufacturing industries, a relationship that has propelled technical innovation and aesthetic and social change. Today, a new alliance is emerging through the integration of electronic technology and smart materials on the body. This study addresses the integration of technology with clothing from a fashion perspective, and examines its expressive and interactive potential. It proposes the concept of “The Emotional Wardrobe”: clothing that represents and stimulates emotional response through the interface of technology. It asks if fashion can offer a more personal and provocative definition of self, which actively involves the wearer in a mutable aesthetic identity. A multi-disciplinary framework combines fashion, material science and the real-time, affective computing platform, called “AffectiveWare”. By merging technology and fashion, The Emotional Wardrobe becomes a poetic interface, shifting emphasis from human–computer interaction to computer-aided, human–human communication.

The Enchanted Spectacle

The fashion show has played a key role in the development of the modern fashion industry. From approximately 1900, fashion shows began to be staged in couture houses and department stores and as charity fund-raising events in Britain, France and the USA. As “the theatricalisation of fashion marketing” par excellence (Kaplan and Stowell 1994: 117) the fashion show also has a relationship to art, theater and film; to consumerism; and to the commodification and eroticization of the female form in mass culture; in short, to the wider formations of gender, image, desire and Caroline Evans

Computer Aided Emotional Fashion

Abstract It has been shown by Picard, in her book ‘Affective Computing’ that human–computer interaction can be improved by simulating social interaction between human beings. Within the field of affective computing, human–computer interaction is explored through computers that recognise, represent and respond appropriately to our emotional states. By amalgamating this technology with fashion design, a new paradigm is proposed. We have named this paradigm CAEF, which stands for Computer Aided Emotional Fashion. In contemporary culture one of the functions of fashion is as an interface between the individual and society. It is a visual display of choice and a powerful cultural communicator of self. By merging fashion with an existing real-time platform termed ‘AffectiveWare’ we aim to create clothing that is personalised by the emotions of the individual. The physiological states strongly connected with human emotion will be measured in real-time and expressed through the clothing display to create an ‘Emotional Wardrobe’. This is a clothing that is able to represent and stimulate emotional response in human–human interaction.