Light Up the Room with Anke Loh's LED Jewelry

It started with an email. Chicago designer Anke Loh had been following the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration’s research over the years. She had a trip planned to Berlin over the winter break and asked if she could visit the institute's lab.

It was there she found the material she was looking for—stretchable circuit polyurethane. Anke Loh took the material, developed by Fraunhofer IZM, and the two collaborated to create stretchable LED jewelry.

The Skinny:

• Fun Fact: Even though Loh’s work incorporates science and technology, she doesn’t consider herself a scientist. “I wish I could,” the designer said.
• Anke Loh
• info@ankeloh.net

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz 

“[Fraunhofer] really tried to make technology stretchable and intuitive,” Loh said.

In the designer’s earlier work, the integration of technology (such as video screens in dresses) became so obvious that the items weren't really wearable. Her current work (supported by an EAGER research grant from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) is more subtle.

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz 

“[The jewelry] looks very simple, but there are a lot of steps involved,” Loh said. “There was a lot of testing."

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz 

Loh found the inspiration for her jewelry in Paris, where she used to live.

“There are a few flea markets you go to if you’re a fashion designer. There are vintage stores there for old garments and vintage stuff,” the designer said.

Last summer when she visited, she stumbled upon a lace shop. “It [was] magnifique. I bought so much lace.”

That shopping trip served as the inspiration behind the intricate cuts of her LED necklaces.

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz 

“If [the jewelry] is too foreign or too techy, I don’t know if I want to put it on my skin. To really wear it, it has to have this aspect of something you know already,” Loh said. “Lace is something desirable. You see it, you like it and you feel something.”

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz 

“I always saw fashion more as a kind of anthropology, a way of looking at people and understanding people, and seeing fashion as a second skin,” Loh said. “For example, my skin is very light, almost transparent. When I was younger I [would blush] a lot, so I think I approached fashion as a vehicle to get a different identity or be more confident. I hoped for fabrics to show this—to change their mood or to change color, and to be interactive in a way.”

In 2000, Loh created her first “interactive dress” with heat sensitive particles that changed color depending on the wearer’s temperature and the temperature outside.

In the next generation of her LED jewelry designs, Loh wants the LED lights to react too. She’s meeting with scientists from electrical and computer engineering departments at various universities to explore what type of medical or therapeutic sensors she could install in the next iteration.

Patent pending. Photo credit: James Prinz

In September, one of Loh's LED necklaces and two of the designer's optical fiber dresses will be in an exhibition at the Kent State University Museum called "Shifting Paradigms: Fashion + Technology." Her LED jewelry will also be on sale at select shops and through her website in December.