A new fashion design that is made with concrete (yeah you heard me right) purportedly helps clean the air by absorbing pollutants. A collaboration between London College of Fashion, University of Sheffield, and the University of Ulster has designed a dress called ‘Herself’ that supposedly uses sunlight as a catalyst. Titanium dioxide on the surface of the material reacts with pollutants in the air, reportedly decreasing nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide in the surrounding area by up to 65 percent. An Italian company called Italcementi did something similar with their construction of a building using transparent cement that uses textiles infused in concrete. The exact details of exactly how the catalytic clothing works are a little vague to say the least. Right now the dress exists as a fabric sculpture in a box, the team hopes that it will one day be more than art. They predict that forty people wearing such clothing could purify two meters of airspace in just one minute– if they were all standing in one meter of pavement. While I at first want to say this might only be appealing at an asthma convention, city life could prove me wrong. Subway platforms and the interior of busses or trains seem like obvious places where an air-purifying dress/skirt/hat/face mask would be more than welcome. For more information on catalytic clothing please visit: http://www.ulster.ac.uk/u2b/issue9/pdfs/U2BWinter10Page4.pdf
Eavesdropper