The process of making adaptive and responsive wearables on the scale of the body hasoften been a process where designers use off-the-shelf parts or hand-crafted electronics to fabricategarments. However, recent research has shown the importance of emergence in the process of making.Second Skins is a multistakeholder exploration into the creation of those garments where the designersand engineers work together throughout the design process so that opportunities and challengesemerge with all stakeholders present in the process. This research serves as a case study into thecreation of adaptive caring garments for sustainable wardrobes from a multistakeholder designteam. The team created a garment that can customize the colors, patterns, structures, and otherproperties dynamically. A reflection on the multi-stakeholder process unpacks the process to explorethe challenges and opportunities in adaptable e-textiles.
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An overview of whole body scanners in 1998 (H.A.M. Daanen, G.J. Van De Water. Whole body scanners, Displays 19 (1998) 111–120) shortly after they emerged to the market revealed that the systems were bulky, slow, expensive and low in resolution. This update shows that new developments in sensing and processing technology, in particular in structured light scanners, have produced a new generation of easy to transport, fast, inexpensive, accurate and high resolution scanners. The systems are now moving to the consumer market with high impact for the garment industry. Since the internet sales of garments is rapidly increasing, information on body dimensions become essential to guarantee a good fit, and 3D scanners are expected to play a major role.
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In sexual assault cases, the retrieved DNA quantity and sampling location from the victim’s underwear may provide valuable information for activity level evaluative reporting. DNA can transfer from site to site on an exhibit, or be lost within packaging, complicating interpretation. Experiments are needed to investigate these factors. This preliminary study compared two cleaning methods to prepare undergarments for such experimentation: hand-washing with warm water and washing with bleach before rinsing. Results show a significantly lower quantity of DNA on washed underwear using both methods. Warm-water hand-washing, the more straightforward method, was selected for further experimentation.
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In the Dutch armed forces clothing sizes are determined using 3D body scans. To evaluate if the predicted size based on the scan analysis matches the best fit, 35 male soldiers fitted a combat jacket and combat pants. It was shown that the predicted jacket size was slightly too large. Therefore, an adjustment was proposed. The predicted and preferred pant size matched rather well. We further investigated discrepancies between predicted and preferred sizes using virtual fitting analysis. Colour maps showing the difference between garment and body circumference illustrated that some soldiers selected a garment size that was obviously too small or too large. In order to minimize the effect of personal preference and maximize standardize ease, we recommend to maintain the current size prediction (with minor corrections for jackets) and use virtual fitting selectively as a control measure.
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The article highlights the limitations of speed as a framework for discussing and tackling the environmental challenges of growing clothing volumes or quantities. This argument builds on a series of wardrobe studies mapping the number of clothing items owned, purchased, and disposed of by 25 people during six months, and the reasons behind purchase and disposal. The results indicate that clothing consumption is rarely driven by replacement and that opportunity plays a main role. These characteristics of clothing consumption explain why it takes more than producing long-lasting garments to reduce clothing demand. Rather than delaying the disposal of garments, a more straight-forward focus on reducing production is needed, that is the contribution of a volume-centric approach.
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The short-term aim of this R&D project (financed by the Centre of Expertise Creative Industries) is to develop a virtually simulated textile database that renders 3D visual representations of these fabrics. The idea is for this database to be open source and be able to interface with 3D design applications such as those of Lectra. The textile database will include a number of different digital datasets per textile that contain information about the fabric’s drape, weight, flexibility etc., to virtually render prototypes in a 3D simulated environment. As such, in building garments via a 3D software design application, designers will be able to see how a garment changes as new textiles are applied, and how textiles behave when constructed as different garments. This will take place on 3D avatars, which may be bespoke body scans, and will allow for coordinated and precise fitting and grading.
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RFID technology is a promising technology currently finding its way into the field of customer interaction strategy, supply chain accuracy and inventory management. Primarily, RFID tags are seen as substitutes of traditional barcodes, yet they can add a lot of value and functionality. Where barcodes require a scanning device to be placed directly in front of the tag to be read, RFID tag readers are able to scan all tags that are in the proximity of the scanner . The next difference is that whereas barcodes usually are the same for all articles of the of the same type (i.e. a jar of peanut butter of brand x), RFID tags will be unique for each individual product occurrence. This opens up the possibility of tracking the entire history of a specific occurrence of a product. Moreover, due to the nature of the scanning technology, it suddenly becomes achievable for manufacturers to track individual products through all stages of production and base inventory management and front office planning on real-time data at item level from production facilities.
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Protective clothing is designed to protect humans against risks like fire, chemicals or blunt impact. Although protect¡ve clothing diminishes the effects of external risks, it may hinder people in functioning and it may also introduce new (internal) risks. Manufacturers are often not aware of the seriousness of those risks. Prof. Daanen, human movement scientist, postulates that knowledge on human physiology must be part of protective clothing design. After a career in protective clothing research that started about 25 years ago at TNO (NL) he is entitled to say things like that.
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Personalization, production on-demand, and flexible manufacture facilities are growing within the European apparel sector, supported by national and regional public policy. These developments seem to embody a much waited “paradigm shift” in the fashion industry; a shift from global to local scale, from quantity to quality and from standard products to personalized services. Such values, however, are far from new, and scholars have already pointed out the similarities between emerging and pre-industrial systems of production and consumption. This article argues that in order to understand current developments in historical context, we should return to the process of industrialization of the apparel industry during the turn from the 19th to the 20th C, taking into account aspects of production as much as mediation and consumption. With this aim in mind, the article traces the rise of ready-made garments in the Netherlands and northwest Europe, and the associated decline in custom- and home-made garments in the region. Although available statistical data is insufficient to accurately map these phenomena, secondary sources suggest that both processes were not simultaneous and therefore there was not a straightforward substitution of custom- and home-made clothing by ready-mades. While availability and trade of mass-produced ready-mades was escalating since the early 19th C, it was not until mid 20th C that custom- and home-made clothing declined among the middle class. In this study, such a gap is explained by a steady increase in the amount of clothes acquired per person: an expanding culture of consumption during the period under consideration may have enabled these different systems to flourish all together. A parallelism of the findings above with current developments suggests that we should not regard emergent industrial formats as substitutionary of established ones, but as complementary. We may then reevaluate to what extent does the rise of the flexible factory enable a “revolution”, a shift from a problematic present to a contrasting and desirable future. This historical overview indicates that, on the contrary, emerging product-service-systems manufacturing personalized garments on-demand must be considered in relation to – and in coexistence with- traditional industrial models.
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We describe here the design and implementation of the Fashion Tech Farm (FTF), which aims to drive sustainable innovation in garments and fashion. We describe our goals, design principles, and the implementation. The design principles are rooted in an understanding of the fashion system, open networks, and entrepreneurial thinking. After four years of work on the FTF, we review three projects to evaluate how far the work has achieved the main goals and how our design principles are developing.
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