NCIE
NCIE
At first glance, the latest line of smart clothing looks unassuming - a set of black sweaters not unlike what you’d find at the local mall. But wear them out in the city long enough and you’ll start to see why they carry a hefty price tag. In a matter of seconds, the black fades into a pristine white, revealing an intricate pattern of polka dots, cheetah prints, and another labyrinthine design. The shirts—true to the name of the line, Aerochromics—are responding to changes in air quality. Specifically, the shirts change color when they detect an unhealthy, or even dangerous, concentration of pollutants in the air. One shirt reacts to carbon monoxide, another to radioactive particles, and the third to air pollutants commonly found outdoors. Futuristic as the shirts may sound, the technology used is actually readily available, says creator Nikolas Bentel, a speculative designer based in Queens, New York. The color-changing dye used in the carbon monoxide-detecting shirt, for example, contains the same chemicals found in monitors used in homes. And embedded into the pollutant-detecting shirts are tiny sensors that monitor changes in air quality. Bentel says the shirts may come in handy if you want to track pollution changes in your immediate surroundings or get a read on the levels in countries you visit. He adds that he’d like to have people test the shirt and provide feedback, but at $500 a shirt (the nonreactive ones cost $90), Bentel also acknowledges that he probably won’t sell many. The hope is that the shirts will be a starting point. “One of the ways to get people to look at information,” Bentel says, “is to embed the technology into daily life, and into the objects they use every day.”
