We've come a long way from mood rings!

I read an interesting article earlier this month about so-called Smart Clothing. This is clothing that would be able to determine what your mood is and then improve your mood by responding to you. It’s still in prototype form and is debuting in museums while it’s being worked on but the basic idea is this:

• Moods are programmed into your clothing based on responses to what’s happening in your body. For example, an increased heart rate may be one sign that you are getting anxious.
• The clothing is pre-programmed to respond to these moods. Responses may include a text message, image or video that displays on a sleeve or an audio recording of the voice of a loved one.
• Your clothing is set to read your mood throughout the day and to respond with the pre-programmed responses. For example, if your clothing believes that you are feeling anxious, it may provide an audio tone that you’ve recorded of a calming affirmation.

Smart clothing original article

3D printing is something that is starting to take off in certain industries. It provides a way for you to work on creative projects that may be far more interesting and easy-to-understand than working on your computer screen might be. It also lets you create cool prototypes that can entice other people to take an interest in what you’re doing. Essentially, this form of printing allows you to use different types of materials together to make three-dimensional objects that you can design yourself.

These printers have come down in cost enough to be accessible to small and mid-sized businesses today. Wouldn’t it be neat if they eventually come down in price far enough that individual people like you and me could have these types of printers in our homes. One product that we might want to design and print could be shoes.

Believe it or not; 3D printed shoes are already being made. Students at two different leading design schools in Sweden are working on ways to create shoes out of a 3D printing technology called selective laser sintering that fuses plastic powders to create the shoe. The plan that they’re working on is that the shoe could be worn once or twice and then the material could be returned to the machine to be broken down and re-used. The idea would be that you could have really amazing new shoes every time that you went out without having to actually keep them and store them.

What do you think?

In somewhat related news, I just have to say that I loved a recent post over at Weburbanist showing off over one dozen super-weird shoe designs.

I read through a bunch of t-shirt and fashion blogs, partially just because they’re interesting and partially because I want to stay on top of this news for updating the blog over at Edgi Clothing (where I write about sexy tee shirts and other related topics). While doing that reading, I came across a post over at Fashion Tribes about a company called Fashionsentz that I felt compelled to learn more about.

Fashionsentz is a fairly new type of business that specializes in branding clothing and textiles with a scent. In addition to branding clothing lines with a signature scent, this company can add moisturizing and aromatherapy features to textiles (milk and honey, aloe vera, etc.). I can see this working in a number of places, particularly for the robes used at day spas! I can also see luxury designers making use of this, appealing to people’s sense of smell to keep them coming back for more clothing.

The scents are supposed to be durable over the lifetime of the clothing using a technology where small capsules are inserted into the fabric which break up over time and keep releasing the scents. You can even dry clean the clothes and still retain the scent. It seems like a cool new option for sensory-rich clothing.

It will be interesting to see if this type of technology takes off. We all love it when our clothes smell a certain way (fresh out of the laundry, fresh off of the backs of a much-loved boyfriend) and it would probably be great to actually be able to customize the scent on your clothing so that it always smells that way.

It’s been awhile since I contributed one of my blog posts to a blog carnival. I love blog carnivals but sometimes it’s hard to make the time to submit posts to them since there are so many other things to be done in terms of web writing work and writing promotion.

However, a post of mine is finally featured in a new blog carnival. My thoughts here on how to be a smart shopper were included recently in the Fabulous Festival which is all about fashion, beauty and shopping. My post was in the shopping category. Other posts in this category were about vintage shopping and buying socks for men. There were also several posts on dresses in this category including wedding dresses, prom dresses and celebrity dresses.

Posts that fell specifically into the fashion category were on a wide range of topics. These topics included military jackets, vintage lingerie, bustiers, pajamas, hats, mending your own clothes and making clothing donations. There were also book reviews and interviews. In the personal style and beauty categories are posts on jumpsuits, recycled fashion, acrylic nails, shoes, spring fashions, big hair, mineral makeup, skin care (including wrinkle prevention) and the man purse.

Happy reading!

I’ve just been reading up on vintage baby clothes and retro clothes for kids. What a great idea! Kids’ clothes are typically so boring. I love seeing creatively dressed children walking around in town. And I love the idea of taking fashions from the past and turning them into something cute for children today.

Of course, you can go totally wrong with this approach to baby style as well. You can end up making your child look way too cutesy by dressing him or her up in clothes that were meant for another place and time. If you don’t have a good sense of vintage personal style yourself then you may want to stay away from this option!

In my opinion it’s probably best to save this kind of stuff for special occasions and dress-up days. There’s a time for kids to be in jeans and a time for them to look super cute. The smart parent knows which time is which. Done correctly, though, I think you could get some adorable scrapbook memories out of these types of outfits.

What do you think? Are vintage and retro baby clothes a waste of money or are they worth it for your kid to look cute?

I don’t get the chance to write about fashion very often but it happens every now and then. For example, I recently provided advice on How to Wear High Heels without Hurting your Feet. I’ve been wearing high heels for as long as I can remember but I also walk everywhere so I’ve had to learn how to do this the hard way. It’s paid off in a set of great tips.

The article was chosen as one of the Top 3 articles this month in the Fabulous! Festival. The two other posts that were chosen along with mine for this honor were on mineral makeup and around-the-world shopping from your computer. Although these were considered the Top 3 posts, all of the other posts were also good.

There were posts on beauty in the areas of skin care and alpha lipoic acid. There were posts on fashion topics like pinups, depression chic and Milan fashion week. There were general style posts on handbags and Apple products. And there were shopping tips for things like prom. All great stuff! Do have a read.