follicle

I love the idea of smart clothing. Not the type that repels stains, monitors your vital signs, stops bullets, or wires your iPod and mobile phone through your pants. I mean the really smart ones that will change the fashion world. I get excited by this. Imagine, if you will, the “smart shirt”…

A shirt that you can set to whatever colour you like. Today it’s a red shirt, tomorrow it’s green, whatever you feel like in the morning. Dial up a colour, and put it on. These are washable fabrics of course, not like those ones with the built-in LED displays, so maybe you buy two for alternate days, or try not to sweat too much from the excitement of wearing a smart shirt.

But better still, what about being able to choose a pattern? Vertical stripes, diagonal stripes, dots, tartans, at a turn of a dial. Then, of course, with some advanced technology, you can download the patterns from over an integrated wireless interface, like Bluetooth.

Think of the commercial opportunities. You buy a blank shirt — tee, collared, long-sleeved — and buy patterns for it, like ring tones. Design your own, if you have the artistic skills, or more likely download something from the web. Advertising, niche designs, premium content, all available. Change it from your mobile phone wherever you are. Smart pants as well. And smart shoes! One physical style, but multiple colours. Never worry about colour uncoordination again: buy an entire colour scheme.

As an aside, when I said a washable fabric, let’s imagine a self-cleaning fabric. One that doesn’t even need washing. Maybe it cleans itself, or perhaps doesn’t even get dirty in the first place. It repels dirt, or contains nano-things (TM) that break down dirt and turn it into oxygen and solid particles you can shake off. Hey, think about that — you give your smart shirt a ten-second shake to wash it. The shaking actually could power the nano-things.

So back to the smart shirt. You download a pattern, maybe a favourite photo, and wear it for an hour, then change it to a different photo. Make a slideshow and have the image change every hour, automatically. Cool. Hmm, changing pictures… say, what about every 1/24th of a second? Moving pictures — constantly changing patterns and images. Turn bystanders into zombies with the moving psychedelic spiral pattern on your shirt. Trigger epileptic fits from stroboscopic images. Subvert society with subliminal messages.

Display live television or video on your clothing. Be paid to be a walking video billboard. Not so great for the rest of us, but think of the commercial opportunities. Then, when shirts in close proximity can form an ad-hoc mesh network you could have wide-screen video across a conga line of people.

I’m very excited. And I haven’t even started to think about the porn possibilities.