Zephyr. Silesia. Sempiternum. Rreticella. Pellicule. Madapollam. If you are wondering why I have changed my language of communication to Latin, just to let you know I was attempting to list out the names of some fabrics which are commonly used by designers.
There are already close to about 5,000 types of fabrics with exotic names in the world which do not read like cotton, linen, rayon but like tongue-twisters, which are commonly used in clothing that we adorn. And now they have gone and done the impossible.
Hold your breath for now. They have actually gone and invented a fabric or fibre that can hear! (No. No. I am not a fibber). We all know of fabrics that breathe. Like linen they say is a more breathable fabric than say polyester. Cotton allows your skin to breathe whereas rayon viscose does not. But a fabric that can hear. Why on earth do we need that? Isn’t there already enough complication in our lives, which builds up due to hearsay?
By the way, just to set the record right, this fabric does not speak. No, not yet. Not for the moment. Yoel Fink, an associate professor of materials science and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his collaborators have hit a new milestone on making fibres that can both detect and produce sound. It means that a piece of woven cloth can become the equivalent of millions of acoustic sensors bundled together. Using a conducting plastic that contains graphite, the researchers were able to produce a microphone made of a sort of fabric which is of normal thickness and that can be embedded into the weave of a material to be able to capture sound waves. Gibberish, right? I agree.
This fabric is named, for the moment, piezoelectric fabric until such time that it becomes mainstream and we can come up with a more practical name to it. So, now think of a scenario, imagine for a moment you and your lover are having a romantic conversation and there is this heap of clothing on the floor and this ‘person’ is listening to every word that you are exchanging. Will you ever, ever be all-alone? No, not even in the middle of nowhere. Goodness gracious. Thank god Fink has not come up with a fibre which can record conversations. Imagine that! And imagine the trouble us girls could get into over ‘lunch with the ladies’.
The writer owns a fashion brand based in Europe.
She can be reached on info@amishi.eu [1]
Links:
[1] mailto:info@amishi.eu