Google is uniting with H&M Group’s digital fashion house Ivyrevel to help it achieve its goal of making data fashionable. The two companies aim to develop an Android app that will track users, the weather at their place of residence and whether the places they hang out at are casual or formal. The information collected will then be put to use by Ivyrevel to design an individualized “data dress,” notes The Verge.
What will the Data Dress be?
The Data Dress is a custom gown with a design reflective of the prospective wearer’s habits and history. The embroidery (or design) on the Data Dress will reflect the daily activity of the wearer. How exactly the dress will visualize data is not totally clear at the moment, but it seems the dress will be fitted for formal or casual occasions, and then details on it will be attributed to certain things. This means the dress will be made of black velvet to suit Swedish winters for those in Swiden, and for the wearer who likes to go out dancing, it will have diamond details, notes The Verge.
Ivyrevel’s co-founder Aleksandar Subsoic said it is core to the design house’s ambition to “merge fashion creativity with technological innovation.” The digital retailer’s skunkworks Fashion Tech Lab uses trend analysis to develop algorithms that “enhance the direction” of the clothing’s design. It counts PayPal and H&M Group among its backers.
What Google tech will it use of?
Google’s Awareness API uses all the sensors on a phone, and it is what the app relies on. It has the ability to detect whether a person is walking or driving and whether the headphones are plugged in or not. It can detect weather conditions and the exact location of the phone and pick up on nearby Bluetooth beacons.
According to Google the app sends the data via a special algorithm after about a week, and the outcome is a custom dress in the app.
“It’s such an exciting moment. The only option today is to buy custom clothing or design it yourself, but many can’t afford to or lack design skills,” Subosic said.
It is slightly creepy for sure, but users who wish to have a customized data dress will have to give up some privacy expectations. Currently, the app is in a closed alpha stage, but later this year, it will launch in beta. The starting price of the dress will be $99 hopefully, says Ivyrevel, but that is subject to change.
