CuteCircuit

CuteCircuit
Founded 2004
Headquarters London, United Kingdom
Website http://www.cutecircuit.com

CuteCircuit is a fashion company based in London founded in 2004 by Ryan Genz and Francesca Rosella. CuteCircuit designs wearable technology and interactive fashion.[1]

All CuteCircuit garments are designed by Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz.[2]

Collections

Nicole Scherzinger wearing the World First Twitter Dress designed by CuteCircuit
New K-Dress by CuteCircuit

CuteCircuit was the first fashion company offering smart textile-based garments that create an emotional experience for their wearers using smart textiles and micro electronics.[3] With the launch of the first collection in 2004, design critic John Thackara referred to Francesca Rosella as "The Madonna of wearable computing".[4]

Special Projects

Kinetic Dress
The Kinetic Dress designed by CuteCircuit in 2004. It represents an interaction between garment and wearer’s activities and mood; in fact, it lights up and changes its patterns following the person's movement [5]

Hug Shirt
The Hug Shirt, a t-shirt that recreates the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of a hug from the distant one using Bluetooth and sensors technology. The Hug Shirt was awarded as one of the Best Inventions of The Year by Time Magazine in 2006[6] and also awarded with the First Prize at Ciberart Conference in Bilbao, Spain.[7]

M Dress
In 2008 CuteCircuit designed the M Dress that accepts a standard SIM card and allows to make and receive calls anytime, everywhere, without having to carry a cellular phone.[8]

Galaxy Dress
It is the world's largest wearable LED display (24,000 full colour LEDs). The Galaxy Dress is the center piece of the “Fast Forward: Inventing the Future” exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.[9]

TshirtOS
Designed by CuteCircuit in partnership with Ballantine's, tshirtOS is the world's first wearable, sharable, programmable t-shirt, that can be programmed by an iOS app to show images and texts, play music, take photos and share them with everybody.[10]

CuteCircuit designs dresses and costumes for international artist special performances or tours. Such as, Katy Perry’s catsuit for her performance in American Idol,[11] U2 leather jackets for their U2 360 Tour, Laura Pausini four and a half meters skirt for her Inedito World Tour[12] or Azerbaijani representant for Eurovision Song Contest 2010 Safura Alizadeh dress.[13]

Prêt-à-Porter and Haute Couture

CuteCircuit product line is formed by the Prêt-à-Porter Collection, the Haute Couture Collection and special tailored pieces for private customers and celebrities. The Prêt-à-Porter Collection includes fashionable pieces made of laser cut Reflective Materials, 3-D Digital Print and Smart Textiles. They have successfully redesigned their iconic Haute Couture pieces for the Prêt-à-Porter market; for example, the K Dress inspired by Katy Perry’s Dress for MET Gala 2010 [14] was the first interactive fashion garment to be featured in Selfridges womenswear department.[15] More recently CuteCircuit has launched the World's First Couture Twitter Dress, an evening dress worn for the very first time by Nicole Scherzinger and ables to receive and show tweets sent in real-time by fans.[16]

Awards and Exhibitions

CuteCircuit is featured in numerous books and publications such as “100 Ideas that Changed Fashion”, “World Changing” edited by Alex Steffen with a foreword by Al Gore, “Fashioning the Future” by Suzanne Lee, "Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology" by Sabine Seymour,[17] “Smart Materials in Architecture, Interior Architecture and Design by Axel Ritter”,[18] “Interior Architecture and Design”, “Sex Design” and “Designing for Interaction”.

Many of CuteCircuit products have also been published in magazines and newspapers, such as “Huffington Post”,[19] "TIME",[20] "ELLE", "Design Matters", "Stuff", "WIRED",[21] "The Daily Telegraph",[22] "The Times", "The Financial Times", “Fashionology”[23] and CuteCircuit was featured in "Surface Magazine" for the Avantguardian special issue covering the “American Avant Garde”

CuteCircuit products and interviews have been featured on BBC ”The next generation of wearable tech”,[24] BBC Global India,[25] BBC Arabia,[26] Channel 4”Home of the Future”,[27] Discovery Channel International,[28] Channel 5 “The Gadget Show”, National Geographic Television, BBC World Technology, BBC Live at Five, BBC Go-Digital, National Japanese Television, and Current TV. Its work has been exhibited at the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam,[29] SIGGRAPH,[30] Design and Emotion Conference, International Symposium of Wearable Computing, 'How Smart are We?' Symposium at RIBA, 'Tomorrow's Textiles' at the Science Museum in London, Test_Lab:Fashionable Technology at the Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam,[31] Gravity Free 2008 and Fast Forward...Inventing the Future in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry,[32] INKtalks 2012 conference in India,[33] MindTrek 2009 conference in Finland,Connected Body at PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam,[34] Techno Threads at the Science Gallery in Dublin, IDMAa Conference,[35] The Mobile World Congress,[36] Ethical Fashion Show, Smart Fabrics/Interactive Textiles SFIT in Washington, Nordic Exceptional Trendshop in Denmark and at WIRED NextFest for two consecutive years in New York City and Los Angeles.

References

  1. ↑ "A Q&A With CuteCircuit".
  2. ↑ "Interaction Design Institute Ivrea".
  3. ↑ "Pioneers in Wearable Technology".
  4. ↑ "Design Observer, Smart Dressers".
  5. ↑ "Kinetic and Camaleon Garments".
  6. ↑ "Best Inventions of 2006". Time. 13 November 2006.
  7. ↑ "Premiados Ciberart".
  8. ↑ Blake, Heidi (31 August 2010). "The Telegraph"Little black dress that's also a phone"". The Daily Telegraph (London).
  9. ↑ Ganapati, Priya (12 November 2009). "WIRED"Designer Duo Create Dress With 24,000 LEDs"". Wired.
  10. ↑ "Ecouterre - Wearable Technology". 13 August 2012.
  11. ↑ "Wearables: CuteCircuit Turns Katy Perry into Interactive Digital Scenography; Fashion Visualists".
  12. ↑ "The world’s longest illuminated skirt".
  13. ↑ "Safura".
  14. ↑ "Vogue: "See who shined on the red carpet at the Costume Institute Gala"".
  15. ↑ "YAY! Selfridges Are Selling Katy Perry Light Up Dresses!".
  16. ↑ Krupnick, Ellie (2 November 2012). "The Huffington Post: Twitter Dress".
  17. ↑ Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology by Sabine Seymour.
  18. ↑ Smart Materials in Architecture, Interior Architecture and Design by Axel Ritter.
  19. ↑ Hines, Alice (16 March 2012). "Huffington Post:"CuteCircuit's Electric Fashion: Light Up Dresses Have Hundreds Of LED Bulbs In Fabric!"".
  20. ↑ "TIME:"Best Inventions of the year"". Time. 13 November 2006.
  21. ↑ "WIRED:"The Hug Shirt, CuteCircuit"". Wired.
  22. ↑ Blake, Heidi (31 August 2010). "The Telegraph:"Little black dress that's also a phone"". The Daily Telegraph (London).
  23. ↑ "Fashionology".
  24. ↑ "BBC:"The next generation of wearable technology"". BBC News. 24 February 2012.
  25. ↑ "BBC Global India". BBC News. 23 February 2013.
  26. ↑ "BBC Arabia".
  27. ↑ "Channel 4:"Home of the Future"".
  28. ↑ "Discovery Channel International:"One Step Beyond: The Hug Shirt"".
  29. ↑ "TransforMe collection developed for the NEMO Science Museum event "How Smart Are You Dressed Tomorrow?"".
  30. ↑ "SIGGRAPH".
  31. ↑ "Test_Lab:"Fashionable Technology "".
  32. ↑ "Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago".
  33. ↑ "INKtalks 2012".
  34. ↑ "PICNIC".
  35. ↑ "Test_Lab: "Fashionable Technology"".
  36. ↑ Veljovic, Eloise (22 February 2009). "The Guardian:"If nobody else will, here's a shirt that'll give you a hug"". London.