Imagine wearing a dress that truly understands and expresses your mood.
This is the concept behind the latest collaborative effort between IBM Watson and Marchesa. The two companies are set to unveil a cognitive dress as part of a futuristic venture that aims to showcase just how far a man and machine can go when it comes to creating special dresses.
"When you were young and you imagined a dress that would do things that were little other worldly, you know the idea that fabrics could change colors or that lights can come on it. It has this magical component. Now this is possible," says Marchesa's Georgina Chapman.
Believing in the notion that color and images can be enough to indicate moods and messages, the first detail that was considered in the process is choosing the type of human emotions that the dress would be designed to convey. Marchesa has selected passion, joy, curiosity, encouragement and excitement.
After identifying the emotions, IBM Research gathered the data and fed it into the company's cognitive color design tool. The latter is the company's groundbreaking project that has the unique capacity of understanding the psychological effects of colors, image aesthetics and how emotions are interrelated.
Watson also went into the process of understanding and learning Marchesa's color palette by feeding its system with hundreds of images that are related to the dresses made by the womenswear company. Eventually, Watson came up with color palette suggestions that are congruent to Marchesa's brand. It was also able to identify the emotions that are needed to come to life on the dress at the time of its Met Gala unveiling.
Other details that were taken into account during the whole process of creating the cognitive dress include finalizing the colors, sourcing a fabric, narrowing down sources and identifying printed and woven textiles that have great response capability of LED technology.
Various criteria were also used to come up with 35 unique fabric recommendations, weighing down the benefits of various material compositions, qualities and weights, and selecting the final fabric that matches the criteria such as luminosity, flexibility and weight.
Met Gala attendees are encouraged to join the cognitive conversation during the event where they shall witness how technology is woven into the very fabric of the final dress.
"Using Watson Tone Analyzer, the dress will tap into social sentiment from Twitter users on the cognitive dress, extracting context around the tone of their messages," said IBM.
The dress, according to IBM, will be embedded with LED lights that will change colors in real-time depending on the attendees' conversations during the event.
"It's a piece of art and something is almost living and breathing. It was truly extraordinary," says Marchesa.
