Anouk Wipprecht, Fashion-Tech Designer – Clothing That Communicates with Our World Through Technology

Dutch fashion-tech designer, Anouk Wipprecht, discusses her work and the many ways that technology and fashion are becoming one. As a successful designer and innovator in the fascinating field of fashion-tech, Wipprecht's passion is to design garments that bring together the physical and psychological. Fashion-tech is a bridge between multiple areas of study and design and is the nexus between fashion design, science and engineering, robotics, and user experience design. It seeks to lift fashion design to an experiential level, rising above simply garments to be worn for comfort or style.

With fashion as interface, Wipprecht's designs push conventional design to higher levels that interact with the surroundings and introduce considerations of expanding technology, personal space, and more. Wipprecht has formed many exciting partnerships with major companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, Audi, and Cirque Du Soleil, as well as the 3D printing company Materialise, as she continues to influence how we will dress in the ever-expanding technological future.

Wipprecht discusses her thoughts on the ways she wants fashion to speak for those who wear it and how the technology aspects offer more opportunities for the wearer. She talks about the interesting spider dress that she created while working with Intel and details her use of the Intel Edison, a computer-on-module designed by Intel to be utilized as a development system for wearable devices. The spider dress contains sensors and moveable arms that create a more defined boundary of personal space while pushing style in a new direction.

Wipprecht describes her smoke dress, a dress that contains a small, battery-operated fog generator. The dress was unveiled at the Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam. The famous smoke dress can produce up to a quarter hour of continuous output or 150 puffs of five seconds each, and it can react to the number of people within the general area.

The innovative designer discusses her work with entertainers such as Fergie, Britney Spears, and others, and collaborations with movie studios on CGI-based movies. Wipprecht delivers an overview of the important work she is doing to help children with ADHD, such as her unicorn horn hat that contains a camera and electrodes that helps to measure brain signals and attention. She explains the process and how the camera records when brain signals indicate that the user is paying attention, which helps to further the advancement of their development.

As technology continues to become part of our very existence, electronic systems can now be included in materials that allow processors and sensors to transmit and receive information. Wipprecht's technological couture is poised to lead us into the future of wearable tech.