Technical Wear

May 25 , 2019

Technical Clothing, or more commonly referred to as ‘tech-wear’ are urban apparels that uses high quality fabric, and are categorized according to those fabrics. To simplify the large category of Technical Textile, the core concept is textile that is created with the functionality as the priority rather than the aesthetics.

While technical clothing is widely applied in sports wear, there was the limitation that it was not considered as ‘fashionable’. Fashion items must be, fashionable, but with functionality as the main focus, wearables fell short. Nevertheless, there are some brands that have made tech wear trendy again, rebranding the apparels as fashion items.

Acronym

Founded in 1994 by Errolson Hugh and his wife Michaela Sachenbache, Acronym first started as a design agency but successfully rebranded as a Tech wear fashion brand. Hugh believed that many of the tech wear was made to bare the extreme weathers of the outdoors and hard for daily wear. He created wearables that could be worn daily.

Hugh also quickly realized the power of aesthetics and accentuated the importance of design. These values can be found in Acronym’s simple but trendy outfits. Also working as a design agency of many industries big names including Stone Island Shadow project, ACG, Versace, Herno and many more, Acronym realized many collaborations with these brands. Combining the technical end of wearables and the aesthetics, it has become one of the top names in the field.  

STONE ISLAND

Stone Island and CP company were both founded by Italian born designer Massimo Osti  and is known for their large spread stores, unique dyes and wearables. These two brands were the bone behind wearables becoming a fashion item using unique dying technology in their designs. The brand also went viral when top names like Travis Scot was seen in their products.

As illustrated in these two brands, aesthetics plays an integral role in tech wear becoming fashionable. A simple example is the Ironman suit, the epitome of wearables. In the first movie, Tony Stark wanted to make a suit with ‘functions’ to help him escape the cave from the terrorists. With limited resources and time in the cave the suit only centered around the functions but in later movies, the enhanced version of the red Ironman suit becomes a part of Stark’s many charms.

Louis Henry Sullivan, the father of modernism’s claims of “Form follows function” seems inapplicable in the eyes of fashion.