The Emotional Wardrobe

The central idea of the Cluster was The Emotional Wardrobe (EW), in which the conventions and cultures of fashion, as an expressive, emotional and communicative medium, are extended by integrating computer intelligence and digital communications. Digitally–augmented clothing is a paradigmatic goal of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), the approach to computer design that takes advantage of mobile technology, wireless networks and personalisation. The Emotional Wardrobe is a fashion tool to explore and express the human condition, and it reveals and addresses emergent social, environmental, personal and technological concerns. It creates new challenges for design thinking in fashion and in computing. Our aim was to establish an interdisciplinary community centred on these themes, willing and able to advance design research by combining conceptual work with practical design examples and working prototypes.

In our vision of ubiquitous computing, digital systems will extend to clothing (and other everyday objects) via smart textiles and materials, which means that fashion will become a mediator of technology. To date much ‘wearable technology’ has been developed by the electronics and computing science sectors and has utilised clothing as a carrier of entertainment and communication systems. Less research has focused on the exploitation of technology for aesthetic, communicative and expressive purposes. To address the emotional application of technology to the body, a union of a number of industries is required. The integration of smart functionality into clothing and other textile products will fundamentally change cultures of clothing, peoples’ relationships with them, and the way clothing is designed. The development process will necessitate information and communication technology (ICT) cultures to be synthesised with established cultures of clothing and clothing design. This will require a multi-disciplinary approach, transcending the current boundaries, languages and processes of the industries involved.

The EW cluster aimed to scope this unknown design space. This cluster brought together the disparate and largely unassimilated disciplines of fashion and technology, and asked and assessed whether such a merger could bring added value to the consumer and the industries involved, and what this will mean to the process of research, creation and production of an Emotional Wardrobe. The project was initiated and hosted by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. In the Wardrobe was Sharon Baurley, Martin Woolley, Stephen Scrivener and Lisa Stead of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Erik Geelhoed of Hewlett-Packard Labs, Phil Gosset of Vodafone Future Studies, Matthew Chalmers of the Department of Computing Science at University of Glasgow, Peter Excell of the School of Informatics at University of Bradford, Joan Farrer of the School of Fashion and Textile Design at Royal College of Art, Jeremy Pitt and Petar Goulev of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London, and Christian Heath of the Management Centre at King’s College London.

This genre of product will obviously necessitate multi-disciplinary cooperation and collaborative work. The EW explored methodologies that attempt to use design and creative techniques of the designer’s repertoire, as a means to facilitate collaborative efforts of this nature. Generative techniques were used to foster a shared understanding in brainstorm discussions, as well as to manage knowledge flows and knowledge or ideas generation. The EW also used ‘co-design’ methods such as prototype as design probe and storyboard narratives to elicit users' dreams and desires around wearable technology.