A fashion show, a brain signal headset, and scientist designers—this is a combination you can probably only see in San Francisco, a leading city in technology innovation.
The San Francisco Fashion Week: Ready to Wear Showcase was held in the DZINE furniture gallery on the evening of Oct. 1. Two of the three designers are actually scientists.
Kitty Yeung, a hardware engineer at Intel with a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University, brought 12 pieces of her work to show to the audience.
The prints on the fabrics are all her own paintings, including a Chinese-style lotus, a spring in the Harvard yard, and a painting of Jupiter. The paintings show her love of nature and science.
She also blended Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and wearable technology into her design. One of her pieces has dynamic sleeves that look like wings on the shoulders.
Yeung herself was wearing a headset with a sensor. She explained that the headset is a product from BrainCo that can detect one’s brain signal and the movement of one’s head, and it is connected to LED lights on her dress. The LED lights change color based on the motion of her head.
“I think in the future people will wear electronics [in] their fabrics,” Yeung said.
The theme of the fashion show also attracted many professionals working in the tech industry. Arpita Patel, Rowena Zuniga, Teresa Mao, and Arpita Shrivastava, who are all software engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended the event. They were inspired by how the designers think outside the box and apply technology to fashion.
Patel, a software engineer at Slack, is very interested in IoT. The fashion show made her think about its applications.
She was also amazed by the creativity of the female designers.
“Especially for females, it’s not just engineering that is defining them. It’s also their own personal interests along with the engineering skill set they have got there. They’re just putting it out there. We are just very inspired,” Patel said.
