The Design Center at Philadelphia University

The Design Center has a new website with daily updates!

Here is a taste of some of their recent posts:

Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion

With the current wave of young fashion designers creating statement collections heavy with knitwear, it could not be timelier for Antwerp’s MoMu Fashion Museum to set up an exhibition that explores the richness and diversity of knitwear in fashion. Deceivingly, knitwear seems an unlikely suspect in the high-fashion world. Unravel: Knitwear in Fashion, counters the established idea of knitwear as old-fashioned and instead holds up an inspiring variety of knitted garments and accessories from the great fashion houses of the last centuries – Elsa Schiaparelli, Jean Patou and Chanel – up to contemporary designers and labels, including Sandra Backlund, Maison Martin Margiela and Mark Fast. The exhibition is a joint project of the MoMu and Emmanuelle Dirix, who is lecturer of Critical Issues at Winchester School of Art and also teaches at the Fashion Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and at University of the Arts London. MoMu’s curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven sheds some light on the exhibition.


 by Siska Lyssens for Anothermag.com

eTextile, Smart Clothing and Wearable Computing Showcase

Deadline: 18 May 2011
eTextile, Smart Clothing and Wearable Computing Showcase
Maker Faire and Lynne Bruning
San Mateo County Event Center
San Mateo, CA
21 May 2011


As technology becomes ever more interwoven with our daily lives, innovative means of interface blur the lines between computers, textiles and fashion.

Maker Faire and Lynne Bruning come together to create a showcase that fuses tech and fashion, function and form, reality and possibility..

On Sunday 21 May 2011 fashion designers and engineers, young and old, beginners and the skilled will join forces to present a Maker Fair original: An eTextile, smart clothing and wearable computing showcase!

Date: Sunday 21 May 2011
Time: TBA
Location: Arc Attack Stage
Producer: Lynne Bruning

Designers: Contact Lynne lynne at lynnebruning.com
Designers must be present at the time of the showcase
Designers can model their eTextile creation or bring their own model
Designer submission deadline Wednesday 11 May 2011

For more information and showcase details:
http://www.lbruning.com/etextiles/etextile-showcase-at-maker-faire-bay-area-2011/

from Fiber Art Calls for Entry

Textile Messages Symposium

Weaving with Fiber-optic Thread

The collaborative art team of Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese transform text into textile designs using handwoven fiber-optic threads and information feeds from the Internet. 50 Different Minds is the first piece in their interactive series. Scroll down in this article to watch a video about the making of this ingenious project. The piece was inspired by a quote by a influential Bauhaus painter and color theorist Josef Albers.

“If one says Red—the name of color—and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”

—Josef Albers


Above: Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, 50 Different Minds (with detail), 2010; fiber-optic threads, custom electronics and software, live Internet feed; handwoven; 50" x 50". Photos by the artists.

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The project is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council for the Arts. Additional donations were made by individuals through Kickstarter.com. Research and development was undertaken during residencies at the Sally and Don Lucas Artist Programs at Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, California, and at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, New York, New York.

Recycled Polyester

132 5. by Issey Miyake from Dezeen on Vimeo.

RECYCLED POLYESTER

While polyester does not biodegrade, at the end of its use phase it can actually be recycled to near-virgin or virgin-like quality (something which cannot be said of natural fibers). Issey Miyake’srecent collaboration with the Japanese chemical company Teijin, which developed specialized equipment to revert used polyester back to its original source material of dimethyl terephthalate, demonstrates just how beautiful recycled polyester can be.

by Sarah Scuturro, Cooper Hewitt