Imagine if the secret index of your state of mind—your levels of nervousness, fearfulness, stress, or emotional self-repression—were constantly visible for all to see, exactly like your number of Instagram followers or your clothes or your face.
In collaboration with Intel, Hussein Chalayan today presented a piece of wearable technology that enables just this: Let’s call it an Insecurity Projector. Five models in this show wore the device, which had two pieces. The sunglasses contained sensors and microphones that monitor heart rate, breath rate, and EEG “brain waves.” These transmit to chips implanted in a handsomely chunky belt with a two-line grid of stainless steel studlets on its back. A projector in the side of the belt beamed visual representations of each emotional measure on the wall alongside the runway. The projection included pixelated dancing figures—the more nervous the wearer, the faster they danced. As for fear, its symbol was a pair of running legs. For stress, two hands were shown straining to pull a coiled rope in opposite directions. And to show emotional constipation, a rose was projected partially obscured by a pixel: the more obscured the rose, the bigger the pixel. I wasn’t quite sure what the last category, “Outer Measure,” represented exactly.
Chalayan said backstage that he’d tried to calibrate the Insecurity Projectors to measure peculiarly British traits. But these are pretty universal emotions in the 21st century. As I watched this show, I imagined the chaos of dancing figures and pixelated roses that would pulse around us had everyone in the room been equipped to fear-transmit. Personally I’m a bit dubious how accurately the three body functions measured by the Insecurity Projector truly signal the states of mind under analysis. The idea, though, was fascinating: An automatic “feelings display” would certainly be a spur to mindfulness.
The clothes were developed in parallel with the devices. The roses, grids, and other pixelations were variously incorporated as overt decorative motifs. But there were also implicit notions of display and projection in some M-65s and shirts and a rose-grid dress, all of which featured high meanders of collar to the front and flat canvases of fabric below. They could be worn outside the body as screens or inside as linings. To be much less erudite than Chalayan, these were also sometimes very handsome. Particularly excellent was the opening section, which included white-and-blue, Bengal-striped shirting cottons crafted into loose, armless jumpsuits with pocketed knees; kimono-esque jackets with rounded furls at the shoulder; and smockishly loose slit-armed shirts. There was also a great riff on khakis and a closing section of upholstered blue jackets of varying lengths with extended round arms and fun lines of tightly folded ruffle running up the inner arm.
Because the Insecurity Projectors measured the rate of air inhaled (unless you’re a mouth breather), Chalayan was inspired to close the show with three strikingly silhouetted self-inflating pieces. Beyond the innovative items of wearable—but possibly unbearable—technology on show, the collection itself was satisfyingly provocative, playing with a host of contradictions. “A lot of my work is about contradictory notions, I’d say,” said the designer. Agreed!
