When was the last time you were in a shop to buy some clothes? Remember the dressing room? Well, that whole experience might change quite a bit in the near future. Several projects over the past few years have been looking at technologies that might drastically change our ‘physical’ shopping experience.

Probably the most well known example of this are the Prada epicenter stores (New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) (see for example here). A combination of top notch contemporary architecture by Rem Koolhaas and innovative technologies by IDEO, Reed Kram etc. was envisaged to create a whole new shopping experience. RFID-tagged clothing directly coupled to the store inventory database, PDA’s for staff to assist customers, interactive display systems for customers used in both practical and poetic ways, interactive dressing rooms etc. Unfortunately, neglect and usability issues with the technologies appear to have crippled much of the innovative concept of at least the SoHo store (see also here). Fascinating nevertheless.

Philips is taking another approach by taking the technology to the clothing itself:

“Philips envisions demo clothing with “alloy fibers” interwoven, which will essentially allow electricity to extend, mold, and shape the threads to fit one’s body. Basically, Philips is hoping its auto-conforming system will allow shoppers to figure out the precise size they need without all the subsequent guesswork, …”

Virtual Business Solutions & Systems together with La Redoute in France experimented with virtual dressing rooms for e-commerce. See also this newsletter from Homometrica in Switzerland for several other examples of sizing you up the high-tech way.

Taking it a step further, our fellow belgians from Eyetronics – who became world famous because of their amazing human body digitization for feature films and games through advanced 3D scanning (keep up the good work, Dirk!) – are also cooperating with partner companies in a project to design a new generation of smart dressing room experiences (hint: ever wondered how Gysele’s dress would look on you?).

Related posts:

1. 2019 according to Microsoft
2. simplicity
3. tomorrow’s garments

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 19:01 and is filed under design, future, technology, trends, visions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.