Student designer’s illuminated dress an Internet success
A dress designed as part of a university project has found a wide following on the Internet.
A young designer’s illuminated dress constructed from junk shop slides has gone viral on the internet, drawing widespread comments.
Victoria University design student Emily Steel, 20, created the dress for her wearable technology project entitled Lighting Bugs and Firefly.
“We were instructed to integrate lighting into a piece of clothing which would react to input sensor data,” Emily says.
The dress was designed and constructed over five weeks with all the slides hand stitched together.
The concept of the dress started off using the little black dress as inspiration.
“I tried to find a material which would look black when it wasn’t illuminated and would then change colour when lit up. Film just seemed to be the perfect material for achieving this.”
Miss Steel found and gathered her films from an old junk shop.
“The slides I used were from someone’s overseas holiday in the 1970s. All the images are of amazing landscapes and city scenes ranging from the Swiss Alps to the Moroccan desert.”
Miss Steel first put the design and finished product on her Tumblr and Behance websites but within a week it was all over the Internet.
“The response has been incredible. It made it on to several blogs and other websites. People have focused on different aspects of the dress, some like it because it fits into the fashion category, others focus on the technology or photography side of it, and some people just like it because they’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Emily has also designed a lamp out of an old lawn mower blade which can be found on her behance website http://www.behance.net/gallery/RTC-Lamp/3930341.
