Pixelsumo is a blog about interaction, with an emphasis on play, installation, video game culture, playgrounds and toys. Written by Chris O'Shea.
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Posted May 23rd 2007 under Wearable
Pixelsumo favorite Toshio Iwai has designed a playful raincoat for children, as modelled by his daughter Roka above, called Rain Drops.
Created for the Tokyo Fiber 2007, “an exhibition of Japan fibers that evoke fashion breakthroughs. The theme is Senseware, suggesting new forms of interaction between cloth, clothing and perceptions of the body. This event showcases a future of intelligent fibers, and the creative power of Japan through commissioned architects and designers”.
“Toshio has taken on the challenge of designing clothes capable of lucidly expressing the functions of super water repellent fibers. Eliciting the joy of playing with water, this clothing is similar to a poem savoring the rain. The coat is substantially detailed for enjoying rainwater with its ‘Fuwari (gentle)’ processing to embroider the fibers like tips of a tooth brush”.
You can see the detail below. This photo gives an idea of how a child might play with the rain. By lifting the coat to hold water drops, you can play with them inside this toothbrush style detailing. I really like the simplicity and elegance of this piece, and am eager to see more of Toshios non-digital playful works. I’ll be posting some details of his talk at Ars Electronica soon.
Tokyo Fiber has now passed, and I’ll be posting more works from the exhibition later.
Comments
(May 26th 2007)
Cool and very playful
(June 29th 2007)
hey do you know where you can buy these?
(August 18th 2007)
Hi chris,
this is a very nice project, however the idea of creating water-based shape-shifting structures is “borrowed” to Kenya Hara, a very famous Japanese designer, specialized in these techniques. In this exhibition you can see a liquid chaotic step sequencer on the same principle:
http://www.ndc.co.jp/hara/home_e/haptic/index.html
Better than Nitinol and Shape-shifting polymer, water can turn objects in differents states and then go back to normal state while drying, it is an amazing field of research :)
Cheers,
j*b