Melissa Coleman's designs defy easy categorisation. Their overarching message, however, leaves no room for misunderstanding.

Melissa Coleman’s latest piece, Political Lace, is an intricately designed lace collar. It extends around its wearer’s neck and across her décolletage with elegant white feather-like patterns.  At the centre point of the necklace is an LED light which flashes every 7.5 minutes. For those unaware the necklace’s significance ends there but in fact each flash represents the rate at which young women die during childbirth - a powerful juxtaposition between something which is aesthetically pleasing but poses an overwhelmingly sad reality.

“I see clothing as a medium for ideas,” explains Coleman. “With Political Lace I was really interested in how you could use wearables to be an activist, not necessarily by having a full display on your shirt, but by being more subtle about it.”

Part art, part fashion, part social commentary, Coleman’s necklace represents the coming of age of her art. It’s a work that gives shape to ideas begun in previous pieces and fully cements Coleman’s unwillingness to be assigned to one category exclusively.  Political Lace is an accessory item, a piece of wearable tech and an activist statement in one, no element overrides the other, rather they all work in tandem to strengthen the power of the piece.

Maybe the reason there’s a difficultly in defining Coleman’s work is because there’s a difficultly in defining Coleman herself. Born in Holland, now living in London, Coleman began her career as a software engineer.  Her fascination with the body, however, meant that she craved a physical link within her work. Today, Coleman has the titles ‘new media artist’, ‘lecturer’, ‘blogger’, ‘designer’ and ‘curator’ all under her belt. (There are surely multiple others too). Ultimately, her work with wearable technology has allowed her to combine her multiple passions in one physical form.

Another piece by Coleman is The Holy Dress. A futurist garment made of  gold star-shaped LEDs that form an armour around its wearer, the dress was exhibited at the Coded Couture exhibition at the Pratt Manhattan gallery in New York earlier this year. The piece functions like a lie detector, when the user speaks the dress measures his or her vocal stress, illuminating and administering shocks accordingly.

“People look to technology to help them out with their lives,” explains Coleman. “With The Holy Dress I was exploring the potentials of data analysis and thinking what happens if you ask technology to help you be a better person rather than just do that 10 mile run.”

Then there was Media Vintage, a series of interactive electronic textiles that contain cryptic or secret messages. Made during an artist-in-residency at V2_, a centre for art and media technology in Rotterdam. The piece was a critique of the storage of digital data in black boxes.

I want to show that wearables are just a medium, you can put into it whatever you think is important.

As Coleman points out, the way we apply technology in our everyday life tends to be about self-improvement.  But Coleman’s work proves that wearable tech doesn’t need to be geeky or consumed with selfish gain. Rather, it can be both a piece of art and a political statement, it can affect change without being dogmatic.

“Wearable tech tends to fall into two categories. When it’s at fashion couture level people like it but they don’t really think of it as something that could be useful and beautiful at the same time. Either people see wearable tech as something that’s totally geeky or they see it as something that’s out there as an art form in fashion.”

Reaching the stage of mass consumption of Coleman’s work is definitely not in the immediate future. Coleman knows this. Her work is still regarded as avant-garde - belonging more in a gallery than in a wardrobe.

In the future this is sure to change.  As technology develops so too will it become more and more ingrained in our everyday life. Already we’ve seen technology leave the confines of computers and enter everyday household items with the Internet of Things. Its possibilities in fashion are endless.

In the future technology in fashion may become a sort of second skin, responding to everything that’s happening around you at that moment.

“Technology itself is an incredible organism, it has so many functions,” concludes Coleman.  “In the future technology in fashion may become a sort of second skin, responding to everything that’s happening around you at that moment. It could change on the basis of your mood or your context. I think it’s going to become more and more aligned with you personally, your individual preferences and also preferences that you’re not even aware of yet, like how warm or cold you are.”

Whether Coleman’s work will ever become easy to define is uncertain. Its influences are vast and its future applications are difficult to grasp. But it’s importance in encouraging all of us to find a more selfless use for products and applications is as clear as the flash of a light.

www.melissacoleman.nl

Photos by Jonnie Craig