Clothes
Perhaps you’re a single apartment-dweller who doesn’t have a lot of clothes to wash, or room for a full-sized washing machine. That said, you still don’t like having to trek back and forth to the shared laundry room every time you need clean socks or undies. If so, King Jim’s new Swoosh countertop washer might be what you need. Read More
Bye Bye Laundry, hello charcoal clothes hangers
Recent design graduate Lisa Marie Bengtsson believes many of us wash our clothes far more often than is necessary. And she may well be correct. Certainly, we're generally brought up to believe that clothes need to be washed after being worn for a certain length of time, whether they're actually dirty or not. It's hard to argue against underwear and other garments that are in direct contact with our bodies being washed very regularly, but what about other garments that merely act as extra outer layers? Perhaps the Bye Bye Laundry clothes hanger is the answer. Read More
Vapor Apparel spins trash into sustainable fashion
The textile and fashion industries have a huge environmental footprint as their production cycles rely on oil, pesticides, and great amounts of energy and water. For that reason, some companies are looking for new manufacturing methods, including recycling, as a way to mitigate their ecological footprint. One of them is Vapor Apparel, a U.S. company specializing in performance fabrics and digital sublimation printing that is launching a new range of 100 percent recycled fabric during the upcoming EcoPrint show in Berlin, Germany. Read More
As manufacturers of smartphones and mobile devices strive to make their products increasingly portable, they repeatedly come up against the constraints of existing battery technology. However, Xiaodong Li, a professor at the University of South Carolina (USC) believes that we will soon be able to employ the clothes we wear to help overcome such challenges and to this end, Li has transformed T-shirt material into an energy storage medium which could one day be used to power portable devices. Read More
Columbia has introduced what it claims to be a new revolution in sports clothing. A special fabric called Omni-Freeze Zero uses your sweat as a cooling agent. When mixed with the fabric, your sweat actually makes it cooler to the touch. Read More
They clearly like a coffee over at Californian sports clothing company Virus. While its employees might order a mocha latte, the company is interested in the grinds. Virus' StayWarm line uses what it calls Coffee Char, or coffee charcoal in the construction of the fabric. The grounds are recycled and processed into a natural fiber to produce a comfortable base layer fabric that traps heat close to the skin. Read More
If you want to make yourself the life of the party then the Party Vest could be for you. Sure, you might struggle to carry on a conversation with anyone but it will likely be a conversation starter for other attendees at the shindig. Built on top of a Daniese Gilet Cali Tessuto motorcycle vest, the Party Vest comes retrofitted with an 8-inch Boss audio bass 900 subwoofer on the back and a pair of motorcycle speakers reaching over each shoulder. Read More
A new dawn is breaking in the evolution of outdoor apparel technology. Many materials that dominate today's outdoor clothes - wool and down, for instance - have been plucked straight from nature for hundreds of years. While textile manufacturers and clothing companies have tried to improve upon natural designs, they've generally failed to come up with anything that unequivocally surpasses Mother Nature. Just beyond the action videos and gear shops though, an improved generation of materials with the potential to displace stale staples is slowly moving from test labs to retail shelves. If these materials can brave the real world and live up to the hype, outdoor apparel - and outdoor sports - will look very different in the future. Read More
