Chicago Designer, Anke Loh, Creates Fabrics That React
/
WIN THE SCARF (BELOW) FROM ANKE LOH. ENTER HERE FOR A CHANCE TO WIN!
Most fashion designers work with fabric, a sewing machine and a pair of scissors. Not Anke Loh.
The Chicago designer occasionally needs an entire computer science department to help with her designs. That’s because Loh creates clothing at the intersection of fashion and technology.
She started by adding heat and light sensitive pigments into her clothes that would interact with sun and heat. Later, Loh incorporated fiber optics into interactive fabric, and broke new ground when she integrated Philips Lumalive panels into dresses and skirts that played video imagery on soft-embedded LED screens.
While larger companies and athletic-wear brands have experimented with integrating technology into eyewear, watches and other objects, it’s a largely unexplored area when it comes to clothes and ready-to-wear brands.
The Skinny:
- Fun Fact: Most items Loh creates are limited edition or one of a kind, an antidote to mass-poroduced fashion and fast fashion.
- Anke Loh
- Chicago, Ill.
- info@ankeloh.net
Win this scarf from Anke Loh! Click here to enter.
To create the knit for this dress, Loh photographed optical fiber dresses moving. Then she fed those images into a machine and developed a knit from that. Photo: James Prinz
Loh finds inspiration by visiting flea markets, different neighborhoods, and other interesting sites around Chicago and beyond.
For “Urban Identities/Transnational Spaces,” Loh took colorful video stills from optical fiber dresses in motion to create digital and silk-screened prints. The fabric was then printed with heat-sensitive ink. Photo: Jef Jacobs
One of Loh’s main motivations is ensuring her fabrics react to their surroundings of the wearer. For “Urban Identities/Transnational Spaces,” Loh printed designs on the fabric using thermochromic pigments that change color when exposed to heat. Photos: Jef Jacobs
This light-emitting Luminex dress changes in reaction to multiple environmental signals including temperature and sound.
Loh’s first fashion project in Chicago, “Dressing Light,” is an ongoing collection that explores her impressions of Chicago, and represents a break from her previous Belgium habits. Click here to watch the video imagery playing on the embedded LED screen. Photo: James Prinz
