Ready-to-Wear Watchdogs: 'Smart' Garments Keep Track of Vital Signs, Hide Oder.

This week's article was about generating garments that we wear on a daily basis to become the new high tech product on the market. Technology companies want to transform basic attire to fit the futuristic mentality many of us carry.

 Companies all over the world are talking about many attributes they can add onto garments that can benefit us all, starting with their youngest customer with baby wear. They want to construct baby sleepwear that sounds an alarm if at any point the child stops breathing. There is a brand new form of "Nano Technology" to create fabric that will resist wrinkles, and will stay drier through out the day. This technology will work though the use of molecular scaled sponges that absorb any body oder or sweat. Another form of advancing fashion is configuring the clothing in a way that it can react and function using wires, heat pressure, and electricity that will help expanding, loosening, tightening, or even making your garment warmer of cooler depending on where the person is weather wise, or how the person is feeling. Also another cool aspect that can be added to the clothing in our closets is that the fibers used to create the clothing will have a reflective quality that will allow you to change the color of the shirt on your body through an electrical signal configured into the fibers. 

Many of these technological fibers that are being invented are already being featured in high performance fabrics used by companies such as Nike. This technology is being put into play as we speak, just last year a company called Philips NV of the Netherlands collaborated with Levi Strauss denim and designed a jacket with a built in MP3 player and a cellphone giving technology a new name.  Also, a researcher from MIT tested out a "smart" space suit that was made up of wearable computers, this same researcher created a "smart" vest which was also made up of conductive fibers that could be used to plug in wearable devices. A start up company called Sensatex Inc. is trying to create a T-shirt for athletes that will monitor heart rate, body temperature along with counting the calories you are burning while wearing the shirt. 

The newest invention that is in the works is the Motorola Inc's. new washing machine where you can "talk" to the machine, giving the machine instructions by the clothes themselves. Depending on how the garment is supposed to be washed, the washer will take direct directions so the fabric will not get ruined. 

Hmong American New Year's Dress: The Display of Ethnicity

The article that we read was about the Hmong Americans who are refugees from Laos who settled in the United States from China as a result of the Vietnam conflict. It tells the story of how textile and dress have continued to play a traditional role in structuring their social life and marking their cultural significance within the Hmong American community. 

 The Hmong woman have been practicing their way of dress through fashion all of their lives. This way of dress is considered a symbol of what defines the true ethnic background of these woman. The Hmong American's differentiate their different cultures in whatever celebration they are celebrating at the moment. If they are celebrating something American they dress American, and if they are celebrating their Hmong culture they dress in Hmong clothing. As time went on they slowly began to incorporate the American culture into their own style of Hmong dress. 

There were different dress styles among different regions depending on the subcultures of the Hmong. The way you were able to tell the different styles apart was the use of two different colors, green and white. The white dress consisted of a white pleated skirt with black leggings with a black shirt with blue cuffs and front embroidery. A rectangular collar that was placed on the back of the shirt was decorated with handwork and it included a black apron and also worn with a belt that had silver coins. The green style of dress included a pleated skirt that was a huge visual aspect because of its wide central panel of blue batik work and decorated appliqué and embroidery called the "Paj ntaub" which was their cultural flower cloth that has been practiced and passed on throughout the culture. Just like the white Hmong women they wore dark shirts, but their collars were face down. Both of the groups wore a version of a dark wrapped turban form, which generally featured a black and white striped turban tie. 

The Hmong men wore black shirts with blue cuffs and black flared pants, they had red or pink sashes around their waist. Narrow coined belts and black skullcaps were also apart of their dress. 

The Hmong American New Year's was celebrated in the Laos village, which was a annual family celebration. This was a time that friends and family were able to gather together to tie the bonds of family and community together as a whole. Celebration continued to reassure the new year by various rituals and traditions. The woman would sew throughout the year to prepare new clothing to be worn first at the New Year's celebration. This was a time where men and woman met each other and marriages would fall after the season. Just like our New Years, this was also their time to show their public display of ethnic pride. Ethnic identity for many is confirmed and displayed especially through the teenage years. This celebration was a national trend moving towards using dress to express the identity of a shared group rather then being apart of a small subgroup. The Hmong Americans wanted to bond the two cultures together. 

Dia De Los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos, also known as “Day of the Dead” is a two day national Mexican holiday that celebrates and remembers the death of loved ones. This holiday has a rich history that involves more then dressing up in costumes and going trick-or-treating. This is the countries largest celebration of the year, that is now celebrated in countries around the world well beyond Guatemala, Brazil, Spain, and Mexican-American communities in the United States. Dia de los Muertos is observed November 1st and 2nd . November 1st is used to honor the deceased youth known as Dia de Los Inocentes or Dia de los Angelitos also known as Day of the Little Angels. The adults for Dia de los Muertos are honored on November 2nd. In some other beliefs the Day of the Dead is a three-day holiday that begins on October 31st, when some believe the souls of young children arise at midnight on Halloween eve.

On Dia de los Muertos, families gather to celebrate and remember those who have passed on as well as build an altar in their homes to pay respect to the deceased. The dead are honored with sugar skulls, chocolate, marigolds which are the Mexican flower of death, sweetbreads and trinkets. Families also deliver ofrendas, or “offerings” to the grave sites of their relatives and hold vigils with candles along with photos.

Dia de los Muertos is traced all the way back to the Aztecs who celebrated with a festival for the goddess of the underworld known as, Mictecacihuatle, and the Catholic Spanish conquistadors “All Saints’ and All Souls’ days. Many Scholars have associated Dia de los Muertos with the native cultures of Mexico honoring the Lady of the Dead, the modern La Catrina which many recognize today as the skeleton woman wearing a fancy hat. According to the legend, La Catrina was a selfish, greedy rich woman who did nothing to help the poor. She is now mocked by many people every year by dressing in ornate garb, painting their faces white and detailing features to look like a caricature of a beautiful skeleton. 

Dia de los Muertos has become a modern phenomenon that influences the fashion world. We see the notorious sugar skulls portrayed through extravagant makeup. All different colors and designs are painted on the face to express the person's creativity. We see this makeup statement meshed with the Halloween tradition put into full on costumes! Ultimately, the root of the skull trend rooted from this tradition. Skulls are created within nail polish designs, clothes, accessories, and even shoes... Alexander McQueen being a prime example! Skulls are becoming more and more elaborate and detailed by the seasons!

Ageism and the Politics of Beauty

Our article, discusses the struggles between age and beauty. Older women perceive aging to be a deficiency and not so pleasant stage of life. The reason they feel this way is  because men "have filled our minds  with an extensive literature and imagery of disgust, which includes a kind of voyeuristic fascination with what they see as the obscurity of female aging. Men's disgust for old women's bodies with its language of content (shriveled, sagging, dragging, wizened, ravaged, liver spots, crows feet, old bag etc) is so familiar to us that it feels like home." Being only human, we read into literature and take it  as it and relate it to the modern life. The fact of the matter is, aging is inevitable and we should not fear discontenting men, but more so, taking care of our bodies. Men are known to go for the "virginal inexperienced" type of gals to please merely their bodies. Old women take this to account that they are not needed nor wanted if they are infertile. 

                                   

The article goes into the argument that the older we get the more useless and irrelevant we are in society. This mindset can take a toll on a aging women's self-esteem and confidence. If one is told that are don't matter because of their age, they take it to account that their voice and their mind is also unimportant. "But most women find that the more our bodies are perceived as old, the more our minds are dismissed as irrelevant. And if we are more than our bodies, we also are our bodies." When we choose to live above the opinions and superficial, shallow people, we are our full selves; our bodies. Our bodies are just a physically portrayal of who we are, but it is our character that defines we are.

In the Fashion world, older women tend to dress unlike their age only because they think that is what is expected and attractive to the male figures. Older women should dress how they want to and what they feel comfortable in. When you try to dress for someone else, you lose yourself and not dressing for yourself. Aging is a natural part of life and should be embraced with open arms. 

Northampton Confronts a Crime, Cruelty

This article accentuates the everyday issues involving hate crimes, teasing, and hazing. At a  high school in Northampton called Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, Matthew Santoni a normal 15 year old student was a victim of bullying because of his eyeliner and earrings. His choice in style and image portrayed something different then every other ordinary high school student. Santoni got so fed up with the everyday taunting of his lifestyle that he allegedly stabbed Jeffrey LaMothe a 16 year old to death. This was Matthew's way of letting his feelings go since he was the type of person who kept all of his feelings bottled up inside.

This is not the only incident that has occurred in high schools, everyday something like this occurs starting from a young age in middle school. Today bullying is known as the number one killer for many middle school through high schoolers. Taunting and teasing have been in the high school culture and define the meaning of high school just as clearly as prom, geeks, and jocks does. Bullying is so common in todays society that in some ways it has become a lifestyle in our teenager years. Some people that get bullied are so used to it that they put up with the torture without trying to make a change and put a stop to every name calling tactic heard throughout the school hallways. 

Bullying is done sometimes for absolutely no reason at all, sometime it is just for the smallest reason of jealousy, the feeling of empowerment, or even just because. People who bully do not take the time to get to know their victim, they are simply just judging a book by its cover. Just because someone does not look like you on the outside doesn't mean they aren't just as sweet or even sweeter then you are. Dress comes into play because there is different subcultures and if you do not look like that specific subculture people automatically start judging you before they get to know you. For example, Lady GaGa who is admired by millions of people world wide gets bullied on a daily basis because of her unique style and image. So no matter how famous or how much money you have you are still going to get looked down upon for being different. This happens everyday, at every age, and in every country.

Your Mother, Your Body

Within this article, we found a continuous pressure to be beautiful through your body. Rather than this pressure coming from our society, we see it more so through our mothers. A mother's nature since day one is to give their children nutrients through themselves. From breastfeeding to supplying their children with nutrients, it is their number one priority within motherhood to give the best form of health.

                                      

Depending on the mother's body image, it is reflected upon their daughter. For example, a heavy mother dresses her daughter in tight and body-hugging clothing to accentuate her body. She does this to, in a way, live vicariously through her daughters weight. This mother did not have the opportunity to wear flattering clothes because she had always been overweight. Another example we saw in the article was a grandmother telling her granddaughter to "suck it in" when she tried on a bathing suit. Her grandmother's words were instilled in the back of her head, leading to anorexia. This is just one of many ways an eating disorder is developed. Our mother's words mean the most to us because we trust their honesty. 

True Colors

The Latin Kings

The Bloods

The Crips

The bloods and crips are immensely associated with the colors red and blue, but to avoid any interactions with the police both of the groups now play down their colors. The only times they do not do this is when they are at any type of ceremonial events like funerals where they opt to wear Tommy Hilfiger and Fubu. The Latin Kings from the East used to be seen wearing beads in the color scheme of the gang which is black and yellow, but lately in society today they have started hiding them in a pocket. The three dots that are tattooed onto the gang members bodies symbolize, "la vida loca" rarely are hidden and never go out of style. 

Comparing the concept of changing the gang's dress code to today, we see this through modern Fashion. When a trend initially starts, most stores don't start to carry the clothing until it is excessively overdone (Forever 21). The beginning stages is when it is very hard to find in stores, making it exclusive. We can see this through a gang's Fashion. Once their dress codes are exposed to the police or authorities, it changes abruptly to become inconspicuous.  

The Enigma of Beauty

You know the famous saying, "Beauty is the eye of the beholder?" We see all people upholding beauty in a diverse way. "Perhaps we are truly human when we come to believe that beauty is not so much in the eye, as in the heart, of the beholder." Whether you're in Los Angeles or in Africa, beauty is a universal characteristic that everybody searches for and perceives differently. For example, us Femmes see beauty within the soul as well as eyes. As Fashion Marketing Majors, we can be perceived as being superficial and only finding beauty within materialism, but this is a false assumption. We find beauty within a person's heart rather than their new Giuseppe Zanotti shoes. 

Beauty is a feeling and not an object. A person is supposed to feel beautiful by being able to represent who they are as a person. You can't throw beauty on, therefore cannot be judged by it. Saying someone isn't beautiful is the same as saying somebody isn't happy, sad, or angry. You just can't define the feeling.