Fashion designers and engineers are collaborating to develop innovative "smart textiles," or garments that merge fashion and technology.
These dresses were created in the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. The brown and blue dress on the left was produced without any pigments or dyes. The colors were created by coating cotton fibers with nanoparticles and manipulating the way matter and light interacts between the particles.
Abbey Liebman, a design student at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., created a dress made with conductive cotton that can charge an iPhone via solar panels.
Nylon nanofibers coated with gold nanoparticles (left) and crystal formations (right). Researchers at the Textile Nanotechnology Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. are using nanoscience to create garments that can filter hazardous gases and industrial toxic chemicals.
A wearable anti-malaria mosquito net capable of storing and releasing insecticides. The prototype was created at the Textile Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
These two dresses, designed by Olivia Ong, were colored with nanoparticles and are capable of killing 99.9999% of bacteria. The dresses were created at the Textile Nanotechnology Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
An image of cotton fibers coated with gold (left) and palladium (right) nanoparticles. Researchers are merging nanoscience and fashion design to color garments without using any dyes, and to add antibacterial properties to clothing.
Denise Chow is the Sci-Tech Editor at Live Science. Before joining the Live Science team in 2013, she spent two years as a staff writer for Space.com, where she wrote about rocket launches and covered NASA's final three space shuttle missions. A Canadian transplant, Denise has a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, and a master's degree in journalism from New York University.
Fashion designers and engineers are collaborating to develop innovative "smart textiles," or garments that merge fashion and technology.
These dresses were created in the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. The brown and blue dress on the left was produced without any pigments or dyes. The colors were created by coating cotton fibers with nanoparticles and manipulating the way matter and light interacts between the particles.
Abbey Liebman, a design student at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., created a dress made with conductive cotton that can charge an iPhone via solar panels.
Nylon nanofibers coated with gold nanoparticles (left) and crystal formations (right). Researchers at the Textile Nanotechnology Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. are using nanoscience to create garments that can filter hazardous gases and industrial toxic chemicals.
A wearable anti-malaria mosquito net capable of storing and releasing insecticides. The prototype was created at the Textile Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
These two dresses, designed by Olivia Ong, were colored with nanoparticles and are capable of killing 99.9999% of bacteria. The dresses were created at the Textile Nanotechnology Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
An image of cotton fibers coated with gold (left) and palladium (right) nanoparticles. Researchers are merging nanoscience and fashion design to color garments without using any dyes, and to add antibacterial properties to clothing.
