One of the world’s leading authorities on fashionable technology, Dr. Sabine Seymour is founder of trend forecast, development and consulting company Moondial, director of the Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons The New School for Design, author of multiple books on the subject, (inhale) and a load of other stuff to boot. Recently she teamed up with Cool Hunting on a Fashion X Technology exhibit at Opening Ceremony BTW during NYFW – we caught up with Sabine to discuss her thoughts on tech, style and what’s to come in the future. 

Above, Cool Hunting’s Fashion x Tech exhibition booth for NYFW.

The Creator’s Project: Tell us a bit about your Moondial project – what’s it all about?

Sabine Seymour: The main focus is to combine technology on the body so that everything can be technically enhanced, in some form of textile. I was interested in actually having technology enabling the human body, allowing us to do something outside of 2D technology and being chained to a desk. Coming from a fashionable background, I wanted it to have an aesthetic appeal with garments rather than a piece of technology that you just slap on the body. It’s really about enabling the human body to exceed and do more.

So would you say that fashion and function are equally important in your work?

Absolutely – both are equally important. ‘Function’ isn’t just about typical pragmatic function, like a heart-rate monitor or something that exists in sports – we also have psychological functions, we have social functions; our clothes are doing so much more. Unfortunately, the word ‘function’ has been appropriated by sports, healthcare, technology etc, but it can actually be pretty sexy when you think about aesthetic functionality values that take in the psychological aspects that fashion can have.

Above, Ying Gao’s sound responsive clothing.

Can you explain Moondial’s concept of ‘the skin as metaphor’ a little further?

It’s something I have had in my head for many, many years, to make technology soft so that we can actually wear it on the body, with the actual garment itself, having specific properties that are technically enhanced.  I’m using the skin as a metaphor because the skin tans, the skin changes its shape, the skin can react to external factors, it sweats… basically, what I want to achieve is a material that basically duplicates what the skin does but with properties that are interesting and have functionality for the textile.

Above, Ricardo Onascimento’s harp cape, courtesy of the artist. 

You’re talking about technology getting soft, though on your site you refer to the body as a node within a digital system – do you think the lines between the technical and the organic are becoming more blurred with the advance of wearable tech?

Absolutely. Right now, we’re at the stage of hard-cased wearable electronics; to me, the next obvious endeavor is making it softer so that we can wear it differently, with the technology actually embedded into garments. From there, the next endeavor will actually be that the materials used will be enhanced and controllable – that said, there will be future endeavor where it makes a whole lot of sense for the body to be involved. You have the first skin – your actual body – then you have your second skin, your garments, as part of that system. It’s extremely important that we can better the human existence so we don’t have to sit in an office 9-5! I got into wearable technology because I like to be outside and move around a lot.

Courtesy of Daniel Wildrig.

We’re big fans of Opening Ceremony, so we were excited to see you guys co-curating the Fashion X Technology exhibition for the Opening Ceremony BST at NYFW (presented by Motorola). What was the vibe there?

The folks at Cool Hunting and myself have been friends for a long time, so when the opportunity came up and Opening Ceremony had the space… One of the pieces created by Popkalab actually uses sneakers from an Opening Ceremony x Adidas collaboration that are on sale right now in the store. Popkalab actually created this [Motorola] application to create an app that uses the sneaker, uses the phone, uses the network… It was very interesting to show not only the works, but also the concepts, which have a much larger implication. The 3D printing was another thing – I wanted to show something so people could understand what 3D printing really is, to be able to see it right there, instead of on a runway. So, it was important to get Pierre [Renaux]’s and Daniel Widrig’s work there.

You mentioned wearable tech appearing on the catwalks – how far do you think we are from seeing it infiltrate more commercial spheres like high street retail?

Commercially available technology like 3D printing has been around in various industries for many years – same as some technologies that we see right now on the market; they have been used commercially in very specific industries already. What we need now is a couple of really big brains to take on new endeavor and say, “Okay, let’s go for this”, because to be honest, technically… we could do stuff. We can implement. In the sporting goods arena there’s a lot of money, so it makes sense… their consumers are willing to spend. However, the people buying high-end fashion might not be as willing to spend on something that’s technically enhanced. I think it’s also because it’s not offered – it’s not that I don’t think there’s not a market; it’s just not out there yet. It’s an interesting space.

Courtesy of Pierre Renault.

And where do you stand on the high-profile gadgets that are getting a lot of press right now, like Google Glass and the iWatch? Are they more of a tech-head gimmick or a real step forward towards the future?

The watch is an accessory that could potentially replace the [smart]phone if designed well –placing the functionalities of a phone onto a watch makes sense at this point, though it might not in ten years. With Google Glass, the augmented reality space is interesting, but whether it is a consumer space is a completely different question. It can be used for a lot of workwear, but whether I want to wear it when I’m walking down the street… I’m not so sure. It’s just one design – I think it has to become much more modular. People might decide they want [contact] lenses instead, for example.

Courtesy of Naim Josefi. 

In addition to your work at Parsons, what are you working on right now?

I’m also involved in the Computational Fashion project with Eyebeam, which announces a new fellow focusing on fashion and technology soon. It’s a project that started last year, and we’ve had two fellows and lots of events focused around fashion and technology – one was on 3D printing and another on sensing textiles. There are a lot of established artists passing through the center.

And finally… what kinds of trends can we expect to see emerging in wearable tech over the next five, ten years or so?

Making technology soft – we also need to tackle the energy problem. Technology will be integrated into actual fibres in materials, and there’ll be changes in the manufacturing process. Materials will be interfacing much more with computing – our garments will become the node in a system.

To learn more about Dr. Seymour’s collaboration with Cool Hunting check out the video below:

Moondial