Behold: the Inflatable Dress
Our Smarter Gadget writer, Nick, just turned me onto Joo Youn Paek’s inflatable dress. Well, really, it’s a dress/chair. Why does the “Self-Sustainable Chair” exist, you ask? The designer created the piece to break the monotony of plain old walking, preferring the varied experience this dress offers as it inflates and deflates with the help of air pumps attached to the shoes. The result is that the dress transforms into a chair, forcing the wearer to sit mid-walk. In turn, the act of sitting deflates the 7 garbage bags that the garment is made of.
In Joo Youn Paek’s own words:
The balance between exercise and rest would be maintained by wearing this suit. The purpose of this project is to transform the humdrum experiences produced by routine walking commutes into an amusing interactive performance.
I say, fair enough. The dress showed yesterday at Unravel, a “living exhibition of fashion…seeking to redefine the notion of ‘wearable’” staged by Amanda Parks in San Diego.
Other interesting pieces from Unravel:
The A-symmetric YSL Shirt, YSL Bow Purse & Chanel Belt (left) by Katherine Anderson, Sarah Bergenheim, Giana Gonzalez & Jenny Chowdhury. This is part of the Hacking Couture project.
“Peau d’Âne” (middle)by Valérie Lamontagne, Lynn Van Gastel, Patrice Coulombe, David Beaulieu & Brad Todd. The color patterns of this dress change with the 28-day cycles of the moon.
Solar Bikini (bottom left) by Andrew Schneider. This is a solar-powered bikini with a USB connection than can charge your iPod
Ah, art. I love it. If you want to see more innovative fashion check out the Unravel website. And if you’d like to read up on Joon Yoon Peak, click here.
Read Nick’s gadgety take on the dress here.
