Webelow Wear

That Guy.

Yes, Apple has crossed over and is looking far into the future with new Senior Prototype Engineer, Richard DeVaul on the payroll. After an angry fist shaking session, we took a step back and examined the situation. While DeVaul has taken our dream path straight to Jobs (ha…a job with Jobs), us Mom-and-Pop wearable shops needn’t fear the Walmart-ing of our companies and brands. This, ladies and gentlemen, could mean an industry boom for wearables.

Wearables, like every other industry, has it’s layers. There are the couture designers trying to make you Gaga-ed out, the  Ipod wearable helping people-on-the-go move to a beat, the rave-scene wearable, the kitschy wearables products for all wearbles geeks,  the DIY wearable upgrade to entertain the wearbles tinkerers, the biometrics wearables used in military and medicine,  practical wearables for mass use and the home based wearables.  Apple’s position in the industry?  Considering the I-everything (Ipod, Iphone etc.) craze and DeVaul’s background, we’re in for a long ride of very cool, user friendly wearables.  But remember, this is one section of a growing industry!

Our advice: stay positive, stay informed, keep innovating because the industry was just put on the map in big way.

Via [ComputerWorld]

Inspired by the French fairy tale “Peau d’Âne”, Valerie Lamontagne is taking interactive wearables to new fashionable heights. The tale is of a widowed king who promises his dying wife to only marry a woman equal in her beauty and attributes.  The princess was the only qualified candidate and fearing a strange living situation, conspires with her fairy godmother to request a list of impossible demands of the King: a dress the color of the sky, a dress the color of the moon, a dress as bright as the sun, and finally, the hide of his marvelous donkey.

No gold-pooping donkeys here, but the dresses are friggin’ fierce. Lamontagne turns fantastical ideas into wearable creations using real time reactions to changing weather conditions.

The “Sky Dress” uses 14 tiny fans  linked to a  weather station to respond to the variation in wind speed and direction. Pockets of air expand in the parachute fabric to create an image of wind movement.

The “Moon Dress” conveys the changing phases of the moon using 14 glowing flowers that change color accordingly.

The 128 LED’s react to fluctuations in ultraviolet and solar radiation in the “Sun Dress”.  The lights flicker on and off, imitating the varying intensity of the sun.

Our vote: we likey.

Via [Ecouterre]

Here’s a great article to leave the wearables tinkerers feeling inspired and hopeful:

Ecouterre’s “Ask A Designer” Series asked Syuzi Pakhchyan of Fashioning Technology  if wearable technology hype or hope?  Pakhchyan ended her hopeful response with a quote from educator and philosopher Marshall McLuhan:

“The book is an extension of the eye…Clothing, an extension of the skin…Electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system. Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act—the way we perceive the world. When these ratios change, men change.”

Pakhchyan explains how technology alone will not save our planet,  but rather the affect technology has on the psyche of people  will spark the change necessary to make our lives more sustainable.  The use of wearable technology will provide a window into how we as humans affect our world.  The transparency of production in the fashion industry, energy harvesting textiles and environmental pollutant sensing garments are some of the ways Pakhchyan predicts wearables will  directly affect people and subsequently change their minds and behavior.

Keep the love coming friends!

Check out what they had to say about our Polar Ice Cap design: Treehugger.com

Well, we’re no longer tinkering in isolation.  Talk2MyShirt and Fashioning Technology have both featured our Polar Ice Cap shirt on their blogs this week.

Big shout outs to two of our favorite blogs giving us a pretty nice nod.

You like it! You reaaaaaally like it!

Webelow Wear is using high tech thermochromic designs to encourage the conversation about environmental awareness through our Green Wearable line.

The debut piece is the Polar Ice Cap shirt which demonstrates the drastic melting of the North Polar Ice Caps from 1980 to 2009.  Using a water-based thermochromic ink and American Apparel Sustainable Edition organic shirts, the image of the 1980 ice caps will “melt” away as your surrounding temperature rises to 96.8 Fahrenheit.  Revealed is the image of the remaining ice caps in 2009. These ice caps have been in place for 3 million years and in a 20-30 year span have cracked, divided and melted at alarming rates. These changes may lead to a dramatic shift in average global temperatures as the ice caps thin and sunlight directly passes through it to warm the ocean.

The time is now and the choice is ours. WW will contribute to the growing awareness and donate a portion of each sale to The Climate Project, a non-profit whose mission is to educate the public and to raise awareness of the climate crisis at a grassroots level worldwide.

Size

Medium Large XL

Color

White

Webelow Wear has been innovating in the wearable technology industry for the last two years with a long line of electroluminescent, thermochromic and screenprinted fashions that help users express themselves through unique clothing and exciting technology.

While wearable tech is an exciting industry, we cannot forget that we are amidst a crisis in our environment and we need to both be considerate of our energy consumption and focus our bright minds towards using our new forms of expression to educate others and provide solutions.  As people shaping the future we are responsible to, at the very least, consider the ways our technology will effect our world.

We’re no angels.  We all choose to make or not make lifestyle decisions that could make a difference one way or another.  We’re not environmental extremists or doomsday pessimists, we’re actually almost normal people, which makes us perfect vehicles to inspire change in others like us.

With that being said, we’re in R&D working on more sustainable wearable paths.  In the near future, we’ll be offering unique recycled fashions with wearable upgrades and solar designs that will help you get rid of the grid.

Our first Green Wearables offering will be a thermochromic ink series using a new eco-friendly ink and American Apparel Sustainable Edition organic shirts  to express some of the results of climate change.  The Green Wearables line’s only technology is the clever use of thermochromic ink.  We’ll explore polar ice cap melting, population redistribution, CO2 levels , rising global temperatures, and making a difference.

Check back frequently for more information, relevant climate change news and fascincating product offerings.

Well, we did it! We submitted our application for this year’s Crafty Bastards Arts and Craft’s Fair! We are exceptionally excited, and hope to see other wearables crafters out and about.  After speaking to two of the Directors of the fair, Kimberly Dorn and Sara Dick, we did not get the impression they were very familiar about wearables let alone expected other submissions. Great news for us, but we’re hoping there will be an active interest in our products and the industry.

So what are we bringing?  Inspired by Alison Lewis we’re bringing our own variation to the Light Up Purse.  The instructions are outlined in her book Switch Craft and is a great project for the intermediate crafter.  We’ve also resurrected our Street Lamp Shirt using two forms of wearable technology: Thermochromic Inks, and El Panels.  While our intention is to bring out our latest Thermochromic Ink designs inspired by global warming, the Thermochromic Street Lamp demonstrates just how cool this medium is. The EL Street Lamp is one of our first wearables project that’s seen many iterations and is still a very cool shirt. And because we are Webelow Wear and want you out there to pick up a needle, conductive thread and continuity checker, we’re holding a brief workshop on soft circuits where participants will create their own soft circuit patch using conductive threads, led’s, resistors and a battery.

We’re still only applicants and won’t know if we’re vendors until July 20^th, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope to see you and all your wearables crafts on October 3, 2009!

More information on all projects coming soon!

Baby clothes that change color when baby’s temperature reaches “sick” levels? Now this is a smart wearable; very simple in function, realistic in design and easy for the dullest crayon in the parenting/babysitting box. At first your reaction may be “bah, just take the kid’s temperature”, but there is something to be said about those of you out there who are baby-illiterate. You know who you are. Holding babies like footballs and grabbing the phone the moment baby cries for more than 10 seconds. Yeah, you need this. You need something to say HEY! KID’S SICK! So for you guys, we give this a must-have-thumbs-up.

VIA [OHGIZMO!]