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5. E-textiles

Research

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E-textiles, or electronic textiles, are fabrics that integrate digital components and electronics directly into the material. These textiles merge fashion design, engineering, and technology, enabling garments to sense, react, and communicate with the wearer or environment. From light-up performance costumes to biometric fitness shirts, e-textiles represent the intersection of creativity and science in modern fashion.

Early Research Foundations

The foundation of e-textiles can be traced back to research collaborations between MIT Media Lab, NASA, and universities in Europe and Japan in the 1990s. Their goal was to create wearable computers that could collect and transmit data without hindering comfort or mobility. Early experiments used conductive threads, microcontrollers, and soft circuits sewn into clothing.

This period gave rise to the idea that garments could serve as both fashion statements and interfaces for technology — inspiring new disciplines like wearable computing and smart fabrics.

Innovations Driving the Field

Research in e-textiles continues to expand across multiple domains: • Conductive Materials: Silver-coated fibers, graphene, and carbon nanotubes make it possible to conduct electricity while remaining soft and washable. • Energy Generation: Solar-powered fibers and kinetic-energy textiles allow garments to self-charge or power small devices. • Health and Wellness: E-textiles now monitor heart rate, respiration, muscle activity, and hydration, often connected to smartphone apps for real-time analysis. • Fashion and Performance: Designers use LED threads and flexible circuits to create garments that light up, change color, or respond to sound and motion.

weekly assignment

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about your images..delete the tip!!

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

  2. remember to resize and optimize all your images. You will run out of space and the more data, the more servers, the more cooling systems and energy wasted :) make a choice at every image :)

This image is optimised in size with resolution 72 and passed through tinypng for final optimisation. Remove tips when you don't need them anymore!

get inspired!

Check out and research alumni pages to betetr understand how to document and get inspired

Add your fav alumni's pages as references

References & Inspiration

  1. Hussein Chalayan

A pioneer in techno-fashion, Chalayan’s collections have featured transforming garments — dresses that change shape, light up, or move autonomously using embedded motors and sensors. His work explores identity, migration, and movement through technology as performance art.

  1. Iris van Herpen

Known for her ethereal, sculptural couture, van Herpen often blends 3D printing, kinetic design, and light-reactive materials. Her “Voltage” collection used electromagnetic motion to make garments pulse and shift like living organisms.

  1. CuteCircuit

This London-based brand creates interactive LED garments and social media–connected clothing. Their iconic “Twitter Dress” displayed live tweets across an illuminated textile surface. Celebrities such as Katy Perry and Nicole Scherzinger have worn their pieces on stage.

  1. Pauline van Dongen

A Dutch designer blending functionality and sustainability, van Dongen has produced solar-powered jackets, illuminated running gear, and textiles that harvest energy. Her work shows how wearable technology can enhance everyday life.

  1. Anouk Wipprecht

Known for merging fashion, robotics, and artificial intelligence, Wipprecht designs “tech couture” — interactive garments like the Spider Dress, which uses proximity sensors to react when people get too close, symbolizing personal space and digital defense.

  1. Ying Gao

The Montreal-based designer explores responsive fashion through sensory design. Her garments react to sound, light, and even the gaze of onlookers, creating poetic pieces that blur the line between human and machine interaction.

  1. The Unseen (Lauren Bowker)

Bowker’s brand developed color-changing materials that respond to temperature, air quality, or touch. Her “Air” collection turned pollution data into shifting hues — a literal visualization of invisible environmental forces through fashion.

  1. Studio XO

A creative technology studio behind many of Lady Gaga’s performance costumes, they specialize in motion-responsive garments and LED couture that visualize sound and energy in real time.

  1. Wearable Collections by Major Brands • Adidas x Google Jacquard: Smart jackets that allow cyclists to control phones or music via gestures on their sleeve. • Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket: Built-in touch-sensitive fabric for hands-free phone control. • Nike Adapt Sneakers: Self-lacing technology that adjusts fit using embedded sensors and a mobile app. • Ralph Lauren PoloTech Shirt: Monitors biometric data and syncs with a smartphone app for fitness feedback. • Under Armour Athlete Recovery Sleepwear: Infused with bioceramic material that absorbs heat and reflects infrared energy to aid muscle recovery.

  2. Two images side-by-side

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  • Image reference

centered image with credits/reference
  • Download reference

Links to reference files, PDF, booklets,

about your images..

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

  2. remember to resize and optimize all your images. You will run out of space and the more data, the more servers, the more cooling systems and energy wasted :) make a choice at every image :) This image is optimised in size with resolution 72 and passed through tinypng for final optimisation.

Tools

Process and workflow

My sketches are ...

This schematic 1 was obtained by..

This tutorial 2 was created using..

footnote fabrication files

Fabrication files are a necessary element for evaluation. You can add the fabrication files at the bottom of the page and simply link them as a footnote. This was your work stays organised and files will be all together at the bottom of the page. Footnotes are created using [ ^ 1 ] (without spaces, and referenced as you see at the last chapter of this page) You can reference the fabrication files to multiple places on your page as you see for footnote nr. 2 also present in the Gallery.

Code Example

Use the three backticks to separate code.

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
}

Results

Video

From Vimeo

Sound Waves from George Gally (Radarboy) on Vimeo.

From Youtube

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Fabrication files

  1. File: xxx ↩

  2. File: xxx ↩