World 70

After WWII, the world powers came together to work on space travel, instead of entering the power struggle of the Cold War. This resulted in Capitalism and indulgent textile consumption having less of an influence in World 70 given the universal space mission’s impact on directing the world’s resources.

This encouraged people to imagine themselves in space, and to own their very own spacesuits, ie. one item of clothing that could perform a variety of practical, human-enhancing functions. Nikola Tesla’s work on “static showers” as outlined in Hugo Gernsback’s 1919 article and experiment “Cold Fire”, in which high-frequency electrical currents pass over the body and clothes in order to clean them, was developed further to be safe for everyday use. This technology works to charge the spacesuits that perform bio-monitoring (ie. FitBit) functions, reduce the amount of resources needed to maintain and clean the suit and help humans reach their full potential.

What if …

our clothes were spacesuits, cleaned by electricity and worked to enhance human capabilities like FitBits?

Issue targeted:

overconsumption of resources to manufacture and maintain clothes

Inspiration:

experiments that Nikola Tesla’s undertook on “static showers” as outlined in Hugo Gernsback’s 1919 article “Cold Fire”; the TV series “The Expanse” informed my interest in space travel

This World was contributed by Judith Sharkey (located in Melbourne, Australia) using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the author and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.

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Published by Amy Twigger Holroyd

explorer of Fashion Fictions

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