"Who Knows?
In the next century, clothes shops may replace pharmacies.
If these (smart) fabrics really happen, then this is the biggest breaththrough in centuries"
Colin McDowell
British Fashion Writer 1994
"Science is about studying nature and describing what already exisits.
Engineering is about taking what we know and making new things"
Eric Drexler
Molucular Nanotechnology
Nanotopia, Horizons BBC 1995
"Fashion is the recognition that nature has endowed us with one skin too few, that a fully sentient being should wear its nervous system externally"
J.G.Ballard
Artforum 1994
"The Best way to predict the future - is to invent it"
Alan Kay
Computer Scientist
Xerox Parc 1971
"Personally, it is interesting to find out that innovations in drug delivery systems can impact on industries as distant as textiles"
Dr Richard Mannion
Ciba Pharmaceuticals, 1995
"Fashion will change dramatically in the coming years. One will find it less and less important to be 'fashionable'.
Good clothes - well designed and well made for the purpose of protecting the body and enhancing the personality - will prevail.
Fashion will be more human, closer to the needs of the people in terms of their being and well being, not "well showing"
Thierry Mugler
Fashion Designer 1982
"Will fabrics eventually become computerised? Everything will be, us included.
People are becoming programmed - it is dangerous, but it is the future".
Karl Largefeld
Fashion Designer1982
"Fashion is the end result of what is happening in the world. We could be living in glass domes and machines will be creating our atmosphere. We may not be eating meat anymore, so we wont produce cattle for food or for fabric. Technology will produce new fibres that will protect us from what is happening outside.
The creative minds will use the technology and make new fabrics look good on people. There will be a time when we will have to live through computers and chemistry and even though it seems strange and impersonal now, when it happens, when we are living it minute to minute - we wont resent it"
Donna Karen
Fashion Designer 1982
"One day whole telecommunication systems will be built into the fibres of our clothing:
Goodbye office, goodbye laptop.
Hello, global network jacket"
Nilgin Yusef
British Fashion Writer
The Sunday Times 1996
"Deep changes in fashion will come with new developments in fabric technology. The body is the most important thing of the future and was not designed for life outer space, not yet anyway. It may take another two or three thousand years for the body to evolve.
Designers are like musicians. The materials are our notes. We have to play with them and each one of us has to make his own music"
Karl Largerfeld
Fashion Designer 1982
"We breathe all the time so therefore we must smell all the time."
Dr George Dodd
Aroma Scientist & Biochemist 1995
"The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio - ripping arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon: a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and new - mown hay back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. . . ."
Aldous Huxley
Author
Brave New World 1932
"If odours may worke satisfaction, they are soveraigne in plantes and so comfortable that no confection of the apothecaries can equall their excellent vertue"
John Gerarde
Botanist 1564-1637
"Alongside the interactive or reactive possibilities of new fibres, synthetic textiles will bring about the softening or 'humanising' of information technology by allowing it to be integrated with our clothing - anything that can be CARRIED by a fibre can be woven or knitted into our garments.
Soon all technologies will be wearable - the ultimate in computer "softwear"
Susannah Handley
Fashion Historian
Herald Tribune 1994
"Technology is the Future of Fashion"
Donna Karen
Fashion Designer 1982
"Spray on the latest fashion and dispose of it at the end of the day. Spray on latex body suits in the same way as we spray on hair-spray. A persons weight will not be of concern. The image will change.
We will accept our 'second skin'.
The most dramatic change will be the development and construction of new fabrics. Fabrics will evolve into something unique to envelop the body - a new way of covering the human form. The future will bring another movement forward, involving "moulded" clothing - a new kind of apparel that will be made from a mould filled with a substance that will in turn give the clothing form. Fabrics will be influenced by the weather. The temperature and atmosphere will be controlled on the actual fabric".
Jean-Paul Gaultier
Fashion Designer 1982
'".....it works like a medicine and behaves similar to a drug"
Comme des Garçons 1994
(promoting their first perfume "Eau de Parfum")
"What Nanotechnologists are after is nothing more and nothing less than to understand and extend what nature already does"
David Braunstein
Park Scientific Instruments 1996
'"In the year 2020, 50% of the European population will be over 50 and most people can expect to live until 80 - or beyond.'"
Roger Coleman
DesignAge, Royal College of Art, 1996
“Nanotechnology is to the Nineties what cyberspace was to the Eighties”
A.Sutherland
The Face 1995
"In theory, you could have materials to help you relax, keep alert, give up smoking."
Michael Bourgeois
ITECH Textile & Chemical Institute of Lyon1995
"By implanting intelligence into materials, we could create a responsible technology, offering unconventional solutions to global problems like the generation of energy. Architecture could change and become an almost 'living organism' adapting to climate and inhabitants needs."
Peter Janssen
University of Glasgow
Smart Structures Institute, University of Strathclyde, 1995
"We know alot about atoms, we eat, touch, smell, eat, read, print. But we dont know much about the 'bits' and these bits, unlike atoms have curious properties."
Nicholas Negroponte
MIT Media Lab 1995
"The most direct route to the brain is through SMELL.
Anatomically, the nose directly connects with the olfactory lobe in the limbic system - the area of the brain considered the seat of emotions. Therefore the most powerful impact upon the emotions is through the sense of smell. In a universal phenomenon called olfactory-evoked recall, an odour can bring back a memory from the past and the nostalgic urge to recreate the past within the present is in many ways, a driving force for behaviour"
Dr Alan Hirsch
Psychiatrist and Neurologist
Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation 1995
"The way to health is to have an aromatic bath and scented massage every day"
Hippocrates
400 years BC
