Just when we thought tech wearables are gadget concepts built from ground up, Nokia makes us re-think showing us that the devices can also just be existing gadgets pimped up to form a whole new category. As the Finnish phone maker has teamed up with several designers and Fashion Fringe winners to up the ante at this year’s London Fashion Week 2014, by creating the world’s first interactive smart skirt made up of Nokia Lumia 1520 smartphones each sporting a 20MP PureView camera and 6-inch screen.
This a pure blend of fashion and technology explored to its utter most, as well as supporting new talent to create something special using the beautifully designed Nokia Lumia 1520.
We are not told how many Lumia phones are assembled to make up the whole attire but as the skirt moves, images on the screens change color, creating a synchronized shimmering effect that emulates real-world fabric. To form this illusion, a custom made app was conceived that employs GPS technology to align the wearer’s movements with the skirt’s sparkle.
Experimental piece to technology
According to KIN, who worked with Fyodor Golan, described the dress as “a wearable and experimental piece of technology”, saying further that “we’ve designed and programmed tiled video walls, and developed mobile apps, as well as bespoke special camera apps, but nothing quite like this.”
KIN employed a combination of sketched drawings, 3D-printing, and Python and C# programming languages to build the skirt.
Asked what was it about the Nokia Lumia 1520 that enticed them to create the dress? Kin said in a statement,
[blockquote]”We’ve worked with Nokia on imaging projects in the past and we’ve always been impressed with the engineering know-how that’s gone into the development of the camera technology – from PureView software to Carl Zeiss lenses.”[/blockquote]
