Imagine a jacket for lonely people. Fashion 2.0. It's called Takkiainen, a jacket for lonely people. It is designed to help the wearer to get in contact with others. Since we brush against each other every day as we move around in the city, we can use our clothes as a medium for meeting people and communicating with them. It would be an interesting idea, if the jacket can store the data on people we brushed against and then later on download those data into our PCs that link those to MySpace. That's the crossover of fashion and social neworks (see my full presentation on the future of fashion posted a while back in this blog)
Takkiainen (a combination word that ties together the meanings of two Finnish words: takki, a coat, and takiainen, a bur) is an unconventional clothing project by Com-pa-ny. It is based on Aamu Song’s original idea from 1997. The concept was developed further in 2004 by Aamu Song together with Johan Olin, and turned into a piece of clothing with dressmaker Sari Manner.
The jacket is made out of Velcro strips of different widths that have been sewn together side by side to form alternating hook and pile stripes. When these materials touch each other, they grab onto each other. The lonely user can be happily connected with other loners simply by walking around in the jacket. Even babies can be attached to their parents. I am not sure if want to wear this in Tokyo, as I can imagine thousands of people stuck together blocking the traffic in Shinguku.
