Towards a Next Wave of Wearable and Fashionable Interactions

While early wearable technologies aimed at solutions for how to “wear” computational devices on the body, current design challenges in the field hinge on enhancing social adoption and cultural relevance. Interest in design for wearables is in part driven by technology’s ongoing shifts towards social awareness, aesthetic viability and ultimately fashionability. Specifically, wearable devices engaging with the (social) body offer new challenges for bridging material and industry disparities that have so far differentiated fashion from technological culture. By engaging with the body, the design framework of wearable technologies necessarily enters the sphere of the social, sensual, sentient, and communicative body—thus heightening the need for cultural and social connectivity as found in fashion culture. Wearable interfaces for the body—such as interactive accessories, haptic devices, smart-textile second skins, or enhanced digital design platforms—must necessarily connect with wider social concerns if they are to be adopted for everyday use.