I know what you’re thinking, these tees are pretty normal looking, nothing special, not really worthy of blogging, right?

Well, Mister (or Missus) Know-it-all, prepare to eat humble pie, because these tees are heat sensitive. As the temperature rises the cloud begins to fade away and the sun appears, which is not only a really cool use of heat sensitive ink, but also a great way to illustrate the point behind this design.

You know when its winter and the days are really short and it starts to get you down? A more extreme version of that is Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), which is what this tee is very cleverly highlighting. As the weather gets sunnier and hotter, your tee is hotter, and therefore gets sunnier, and you’re happier, sooo cool!

There’s another design that has a cloud on it which brings up the message “the sun is nature’s prozac” which is technically just as impressive, but I don’t think it has quite the same impact.

Neither are for sale, unfortunately, I think they’re just part of a designer’s portfolio. [via Kottke]

*The designers website seemed to disappear as I was writing about the tees, so those links probably won’t work, unless there’s just a temporary issue.

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Tags » clever • cloud • funny • innovation • notforsale • sun • T-shirts • technology

I don’t expect anyone to be buying this pair of hoodies since the price is $480-$600, but you know how I’m a sucker for instances when clothing and technology, and these hoodies are most definitely one of those instances. I could try and explain it myself, but the makers are far more eloquent than I am, so…

A fitted dark-blue canvas hoodie sports the collection’s abstracted logo in a pattern made of a futuristic silver conductive fabric. When two people wearing the hoodies embrace they actually power each other up through that pattern. The symbolic energy transfer becomes fully actualized and the embrace is instantly translated into an explosion of light and sound.

Small white lights flicker in the back of each hoodie forming a big-dipper pattern while a faint heart beat sound is emitted. The hoodies themselves take their design inspiration from the construction of early Siberian hooded coats, creating an enveloping safe haven, a tranquil vestige of protection and romanticism. The hoodies also come in a luxurious, cashmere-like 100% bamboo basket weave — very huggable indeed.

Amazing, right?

I know that it’s practical application is actually pretty limited, but the very idea of a hoodie that is powered by hugs, let me say that again> Powered. By. Hugs. Is just utterly fantastic to me, its like a real life version of the Care Bears. Its cool how Studio 5050 seem to have also made a quality garment too, usually techno-clothing is more focused on the electrical side of things than the quality of the clothes, so its good to see them going above and beyond in the name of comfort.

embrace-me by Studio 5050

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Tags » black • embrace me • heart beat • hoodie • lights • romantic • studio 5050 • technology

I’m a bit of a fan of clothing and technology being brought together in some kinda crazy meeting of fashion and science (fashience? scishion?), and when it can actually have a practical application that’s even better. The t-shirt above, which LiveScience charitably describe as ‘pretty cool-looking’, can monitor a persons vital signs, which would probably be pretty good for people in hospitals, those being rehabilitated at home, and athletes. One version of the t-shirt collects data on an SD card for later analysis, and another version can be synced up with a smartphone or PDA. I think it would be really cool if the shirt had GPS, and then you’d be able to monitor how your body reacted at different points during the day, I know that’s probably information overload for a lot of people, but it could be a pretty interesting project.

T-Shirt Monitors Heart Rate @ LiveScience [via TeeBurst]

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Tags » health • heart • T-shirts • technology

I’m pretty tempted to file this on under ‘lame’, but its a fairly interesting concept and so probably deserves a quick mention.

From what I can tell, you draw on that little section of the tee, and can then light up your message using an attached battery pack. I can’t really think of a decent use for this beyond novelty. If it could be possible to have a much larger ‘canvas’ which looked more naturally like part of the tee (rather than having a frame around it) then I think this could be a lot of fun, possibly even useful to artists who wanted to prototype designs. Imagine if you could plug in a memory card and it would scroll through several different designs automatically. Obviously, that’s a bit ahead of our time, but maybe when I’m a grey-haired, old t-blogger they’ll be commonplace.

Ive just had a thought for a DIY version of this, just glue an Etch-A-Sketch to a tee and carry a torch around. Much cheaper, and you’ll be able to make countless nipple-twiddling jokes!

Costiness=£29.95 Link (on pre-order) [thanks, DVICE]

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Tags » black • gadget • novelty • t-shirt • technology

Okay, here’s a diversion from my usual coverage, a t-shirt that can actually generate electricity! From the New Scientist:

In 2007 Zhong Lin Wang, a materials scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, developed a generator composed of a forest of piezoelectric zinc oxide nanowires topped by a flat conductive plate. As the plate is pushed down, the wires bend, producing a voltage that induces current to flow into the plate.

Now Wang has turned this idea into an electricity-generating thread, which he plans to weave into a fabric. His team figured out how to grow the nanowires on a strand of Kevlar fibre instead of a flat surface, so that the wires stick out from the fibre like the bristles on a pipe-cleaner.

When two of the bristly fibres rub against one another, the nanowires deform, causing a current to flow through a thin layer of metal coating on one of the fibres.

(That’s quite a long quote, so I feel like a bit of a plagiariser, but there’s no way I’d be able to explain this succinctly)

How awesome would it be if you could charge your cellphone just by wearing a t-shirt? Or keep your iPhone playing as long as you kept walking? I’d imagine that we’re probably many years away from this being a usable technology, but it’s always interesting to see how technology is moving on.

New Scientist

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Tags » new scientist • power • science • t-shirt • technology