Anouk Wipprecht’s Haute Couture Dress Contains Robotic Elements You Can Use in Your Designs

The great thing about the maker community is that it embraces creative pursuits of all kinds. Around here, we tend to focus on those projects that contain electronic components, but we’re just as impressed by techniques like knitting and whittling as we are by surface-mount soldering and programming. That certainly extends to the world of fashion, which is famous for experimentation with the unconventional. Anouk Wipprecht is a fashion tech designer who embodies that ideal and she created this eye-catching dress that contains robotic elements you can incorporate into your own patterns.

Wipprecht’s niche is the intersection of avant-garde fashion and technology. Her garments take advantage of modern maker tech — either to bring the pieces to life or during the fabrication process. Her “SCALE DRESS” is a fantastic example. Even in still photos, it has the bold lines of a runway-ready design. But movement takes it to the next level. Several wing-like structures move back and forth thanks to servo motor actuation. A proximity sensor embedded in the dress’s collar triggers that movement, creating a physical response to the presence of others. It is safe to say that it makes a statement.

The best part, however, is that Wipprecht’s “SCALE DRESS” is an open source project. She put particular effort into designing the servo mounts so that anyone can reproduce them for use with their own creations. The base of each servo mount is a two-piece design made up of 3D-printed parts. Wipprecht modeled those parts so they can be sewed onto textiles, with the servo attaching to the outer piece and the inner piece acting as a backing. The inner piece is thin to make the dress as comfortable as possible for the wearer, which is a challenge in the wearables and e-textiles industries.

While the “SCALE DRESS” has those wing-like structures attached to the motors, Wipprecht designed the mounts to be somewhat universal. Other fashion designers can use them to bring movement to their pieces in many different ways.

The servo motors themselves are standard 9G models that are ubiquitous in the maker community and easy to work with. They’re controllable by any microcontroller development board one might want to use, either directly or via a servo driver board.

One of Wipprecht’s goals is to bring more women into STEM fields and the “SCALE DRESS” seems like a great way to achieve that.