LUX

Blurring the lines between fashion and technology, Lux combines concepts in electrical engineering and computer science with modern trends and glamorous fashion. Lux integrates electronics and light in a natural, unobtrusive way, as opposed to the more gaudy, avant-garde style of most current wearable technology.

Clothing is an essential part of personal expression, and while we think about what we want to wear each day, we rarely think about how we want to wear it. The clothing in Lux senses every motion, confronting us with our own actions by exaggerating them with LEDs that reflect even our smallest gestures. Other pieces in the line can interact with one another, changing when wearers touch.

Designed for Lunar Gala, a spring fashion show that features the work of student designers, LUX is a collaboration between myself and Alanna Fusaro (Carnegie Mellon School of Design ’14).

Design Overview:

LUX began as a solo project called Diode, playing with the experience of motion sensitive and interactive clothing. Initially, I had designed a line of more casual, less runway-oriented wear. Below, you can see a composite of a few concept sketches from this phase of the design:

After my partnership with Alanna, we focused on refining the line into clothing more in line with fashion trends and emphasizing wearability. Alanna brought on a strong fashion perspective and expertise in garment construction (not to mention the beautiful watercolors which you can see below), and together we produced the following lookbook, which we submitted to Lunar Gala as our design proposal:

Later, we redid concepts on the feathered jacket to make it fit more into the rest of the line by replacing the laser pointers with soft, fading LEDs. We also replaced the women’s jacket with a dress that had lights embedded in the collar.

Kickstarter Campaign & Fundraising:

As Lunar Gala lines are self-funded projects, Alanna and I decided to run a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds. I assembled promotional materials and created an introduction video for our page, and coordinated fundraising efforts and a backer rewards program. After a month of fundraising, we exceeded our $1600 goal by more than $400. You can view our Kickstarter page here

Below are a few of the promotional materials I created for our project:

A Few Additional Photos:

Top Two Rows of Photos by Guillermo Gomez. Bottom Photos by Jenn Coloma.

Further Development:

Alanna and I submitted a subsection of LUX to Meeting of the Minds, an undergraduate research symposium. We modified a few pieces to function in ways that weren’t possible on the runway, including the dress below, which we’ve hooked up to a webcam to create the first piece ever of facial recognition clothing.

Using Face_OSC to do facial recognition, a webcam allows smiling and mouth movement to control an array of LED’s that respond in real time to facial features. Raising your eyebrows flashes the lights on the back of the collar in rapid succession, letting everyone around know if you are surprised or angry.

Collaborators: Alanna Fusaro