The main purpose behind Spikey is to create a wearable item that extends both the sense of sight and touch. It is modeled after the canes used by blind and visually impaired people that help them feel where they are going, and by extension, replace their missing sense of sight. The idea behind this project was essentially a wearable cane that extends in all directions, enabling people to feel not just directly in front of them, but all around them.

This project was begun during NuVu's Futuristic Fashion Sci-Fi summer session by Ginevra Zaccagnini, Jane Chang and Yvonne Hsiao and continued by Simon Zalesky and Ezra Morrison during the month preceeding fashion week.

Press: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/fashion-style/blog/2015/10/05/emerging-trends-boston-fashion-week/

The main purpose behind Spikey is to create a wearable item that extends both the sense of sight and touch. It is modeled after white canes used by blind and visually impaired people that help them feel where they are going, and by extension, replace their missing sense of sight. The idea behind this project was essentially a wearable cane that extends in all directions, enabling people to feel not just directly in front of them, but all around them.

I took on this project after a prototype had already been made over the summer, so I had that model to work with. I brainstormed several ideas of what I could add to the dress to make it serve the purpose I outlined better, including potentially adding something like a proximity sensor to the ends of the spikes or something similar that would allow the user to feel what was around them, but I quickly scrapped these ideas, as they proved to be difficult to develop and execute in the timeframe that I had. I also brainstormed an idea that would have completely changed the dress' shape to look more like pangolin scales, but I scrapped this as well.

The first iteration was very similar to the prototype created earlier in the fall. It had several gaps in the dress that acted like hinges to allow greater flexibility, as well as a more tapered design with almost entirely long, straight lines. The main thing I changed from the earlier prototype to this iteration was that I made the wood (or in this case cardboard) slats wider and added a few more "hinges" to the bottom half of the dress to add flexibility around the hips.

In the second iteration I added a scooped neckline with jagged, terraced edges. I added this to make the dress less boxy, which I thought had been an undesirable trait of the first iteration. This also added what I thought was a robotic aspect to the design. I added this design to the bottom part of the dress as well, which replaced the hinges on the previous iteration. I also removed the tapered part of the midsection, as it protruded from the body in an awkward way that was not in line with the rest of the design.

In the third iteration I removed the hinges entirely and made the slats in the front single pieces of wood (cardboard). The justification for this was that it added to the robotic feel of the whole piece. I also added support above the arm holes, as there was not enough "substance" there to support the weight of the dress. The next iteration added the same jagged, angular design to the bottom of the dress, mostly for consistency, so that every part of the dress would be designed in this way.