The raincoat and the umbrella have been the staples of rainwear for decades, probably even centuries, but Chinese designers are attempting to challenge that with a bizarre new product currently called an “umbrella raincoat”.

As the name suggests, this innovative rainwear accessory combines the raincoat and the umbrella with questionable results. For starters, it looks kind of ridiculous, and sellers on Chinese websites like Aliexpress actually list this fact as the only downside of the product. They actually phrase it a little differently – “You will get 100% rate of second glances” – but that’s just a fancy way of saying it looks weird. Also, like the good ol’ umbrella, it only shields your upper body from the rain, with the lower torso and legs being almost completely exposed. On the upside, it does free up both your hands, which is apparently the main advantage of wearing an umbrella raincoat. Read More »

A hoodie isn’t really the kind of thing you ever consider passing on to your children and grandchildren, but then again, most hoodies aren’t made from Kevlar or designed to outlast their wearer.

Adventure clothing brand Vollebak has been in the business of creating “cutting edge adventure sports clothing using insights and discoveries from fields as diverse as neuroscience, physiology, material technology and space exploration” for years. Their previous products include a fabric that uses nanotechnology to camouflage things like sweat, salt, dirt and even blood, and an abrasion-resistant jacket able to scar rock and tolerate high-speed falls of up to 120 km/h. But their latest invention is easily the most impressive – an ultra-durable hoodie designed to outlive its wearer.

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Summer is here, and if you’re a guy looking for a light attire that is sure to turn heads, these see-through lace shorts and shirts created by Los Angeles fashion brand Hologram City are sure to do the trick.

Originally created for a music video, these pastel lace shirts and shorts for men have recently become available for pre-order on the Hologram City website. Photos of male models sporting the unusual-looking clothes have been doing the rounds online for a few days now, leaving most people wondering if they are actual products or just a fashion hoax. It turns out they’re for real.

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Jeans are usually synonymous with denim, but British fashion company Topshop seems to think plastic works too. Its 100% polyurethane see-through jeans went on sale last months for a whopping $100, and got some not so-positive reactions online.

Why would anyone ever think that plastic pants, be they jeans, leggings or what-have-you, are a good idea? Well, nobody knows, and Topshop has yet to comment on what inspired the unusual garment, but somehow it seems to be a huge hit with shoppers. A few weeks after showing up on the Topshop online store, the MOTO Clear Plastic Straight Leg Jeans are currently out of stock.

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For the past couple of days, fashion retailer Nordstrom has been the butt of a lot of jokes on social media, after it was revealed that it is selling a pair of jeans caked in fake mud for a whopping $425.

The Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans are apparently brand new, but make you look like you’ve just finished feeding your pigs, or you just fell in a ditch after a wild night of partying. They look filthy, but that’s apparently the point, as Nordstrom claims the mud “shows you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.”

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With cattle breeding at an all time high, manure has become one of the world’s greatest environmental hazards, but one Dutch artist is using chemistry to turn into something that is both eco-friendly and valuable. Her innovative technique turns manure into a variety of useful materials like clothing fabric, bio-degradable plastic and paper.

In recent years, scientists around the world have made great progress in their attempts to recycle cattle manure, including turning it into natural fertilizer and biogas, but Eindhoven designer Jalila Essaïdi didn’t think they were efficient enough to solve the global manure surplus problem. So she started on her very own solution, one that approached animal waste as a valuable material that could be processed into useful products. The results of her work prove that manure really is worth its weight in gold.

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Fans of white T-shirts have long been looking to a solution to their transparency problem. No matter how thick the fabric is, you can almost always see through them, and the nipples, being slightly darker than the rest of the skin, are the most visible. Well, a Japanese company claims to have come up with an answer to this issue.

According to a 2013 Japanese study, 84 percent of women find looking at male nipples through their see-through white shirts disgusting, and men don’t like wearing transparent white clothes too much either, but they don’t really have too many options, especially when it comes to t-shirts. But now, a Japanese company called the the Seiso Shiro T Production Committee claims to have come up with the ultimate male nipple-concealing technology. Developed over a period of two years, using special Japanese stitching techniques and high quality, pesticide-free cotton from Japan, the USA, Uganda, and India, their new white t-shirts promise to make visible nipples a thing of the past.

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Designed to help frequent flyers bypass airport baggage queues, reduce baggage fees and virtually eliminate the risk of lost luggage, this modular Airport Jacket features 14 pockets and two detachable “pocket panels” that fit around 15 kilograms of luggage.

“With airlines beginning to charge for overhead carry-on baggage as well as severely restricting baggage allowances for the low fare economy traveler, my partner and I have designed a modular jacket that allows you to wear your laptop, tablet, two pairs of shoes, a pair of jeans, five t-shirts, a jumper and an SLR camera,” designer Claire Murphy explains. “It totals 14 deep pockets, including eight pockets at hip length, 11 pockets at three-quarter length and 14 pockets at full length. It includes two detachable pocket panels, and a carry-on size duffle bag.”

Claire and Benke Murphy came up with the idea for the Airport Jacket while traveling home with their newborn child. They had so much extra carry-on luggage, because of the baby, that the airline tried to charge them $140 for it, more than the cost of their tickets. So they had to clothes, gadget chargers, diapers and toys into their pockets, until they were just over the weight limit. They dodged the tax, but everything was sticking out of their pockets and it was a pretty uncomfortable plane ride. That’s when they decided that there was a massive need for a solution to this problem, and the idea for the Airport Jacket was born.

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If you’re sick of waiting for summer to get a natural tan, it’s time you learned about TanRound, the world’s only apparel that lets you sunbathe all year round, even in the cold winter months.

Let’s face it, spray-on tans look nasty, and UV tanning beds are dangerous, but what’s a person to do when it’s too cold to go outside for good ol’ fashion sunbathing that not only makes you look good but replenishes your vitamin D reserves? Well, until not too long ago, we didn’t have too many options, but now there’s TanRound, an innovative line of apparel that allows wearers to sunbathe in cool temperatures down to -1 degrees Celsius. If you have no problem walking around in see-through plastic, it might be just what you’ve been looking for.

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Let’s face it, red wine and sweat are the bane of stylish clothing. No matter how careful you try to be, you can only dodge wine stains for so long, and there’s really no escaping those yellowish sweat stains around the armpits. They’ll make you throw away an otherwise perfectly good shirt, but there’s really no other way around it. Or is there?

Amsterdam-based startup Labfresh claims to have come up with a range of cotton shirt and ties that make all sorts of problematic stains a non-issue. Not only that, but it supposedly prevents any smells from adhering to the fabric and is wrinkle resistant, requiring only minimal ironing. It sounds too good to be true, but Labfresh founders Kasper Brandi Petersen and Lotte Fink claim that their innovative INDUO technology can do all that and more, while preserving the cotton shirts’ natural feel.

“It is like cotton, but better!” Labfresh claims. “The INDUO technology blocks out all fluid and bacteria before it enters the fabric. Therefore you can rinse off almost any substance with ease. To achieve this we work on every aspect of the fabric – from the cotton selected to the way the yarns are spun and then woven. Our cotton is also treated so that the fibers are transformed to their very core, unlike other existing technologies, which can remain on the surface and wash off.”

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Eternity is a really long time, so you’d probably want to spend it looking your best, right? Luckily, a popular clothing store has recently put together a collection of stylish clothes they think are perfect for the afterlife.

English clothing company Lyst claims that their new ‘Over My Dead Body’ collection was inspired by the results of a customer survey which showed that 85% of Britons have thought about their final outfit, with about a quarter of them saying they would be willing to spend £1,000 on it.

“What we wear is such a huge reflection of who are and our personalities that it’s unsurprising that people now have a clear picture of what they want to be buried in,” said Katherine Ormerod, editorial director of Lyst. “They say life’s too short for boring clothes, we agreed and took it one step further. Death is too long to get your last outfit wrong.” Read More »

How much would you pay for a truly one-of-a-kind pair of jeans featuring an abstract pattern of scratches and bite arks designed by lions at a Japanese zoo? Only ten pairs will be available this year, so you’d better be ready to break the piggy bank.

Zoo Jeans are part of a revitalization campaign for Japn’s Tohoku region, and were originally thought up at Sendai City’s Tohoku Gakuin University. The first pairs were originally launched in 2014, when lions, tigers and bears were given a series of toys wrapped in denim and allowed to literally leave their mark on the fabric. The toys were then retrieved and the denim was passed over to jeans makers who made sure the placement of claw and bite marks on the pants was just right. Although very pricey, Zoo Jeans proved extremely popular, so this year, the Tohoku Gakuin University is selling another 10 pairs designed by lions, via online auction.

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While most fashion designers prefer to sew their creations, 41-year-old Aniela Hoitink has chosen to ‘grow’ hers in petri dishes. The Amsterdam-based textile designer recently created a 100 percent biodegradable dress – good for the environment and your skin – using nothing but discs of mushroom root.

By sticking the discs together, Aniela created a surprisingly good-looking dress that seems to fit the female figure perfectly. She needed 350 discs to make a single dress, so she spent a week-and-a-half growing them in petri dishes before they were ready to be used. Because the dress requires no cutting or sewing, there is no leftover material that needs to be discarded. The material doesn’t require hemming either, so it can be cut to suit the wearer’s requirements of length or shape. And more discs can be added to create sleeves or length. The dress can be composted when it is no longer needed, so it doesn’t actually end up in landfills.

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If you’re the kind of person who loves travel but find it difficult to break down language barriers, you may want to check out Iconspeak, a T-shirt covered in basic pictographs ranging from clocks to bathrooms. Simply point to the symbol associated with your need, and hopefully, the person you’re talking to will understand. It’s better than having to play charades with strangers, I can tell you that.

Iconspeak is the brainchild of friends George Horn and Florian Nast. They were traveling through Asia in 2013 and found themselves in a remote village with “no infrastructure, zero tourism, and just some locals.” The problems they encountered while trying to communicate their needs to the locals inspired them to start working on a simple yet effective solution to the language gap. Two years later, they came up with the Iconspeak t-shirt.

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Megadose, a Brazilian company that designs maternity clothes, has released a new line of anti-Zika apparel. These clothes are made of a special fabric that is infused with a natural mosquito repellent called citronella and are designed to help pregnant women avoid contracting the dreaded Zika virus.

Ever since the Zika outbreak spread across the Pacific to the Americas and reached pandemic levels in 2015, people in these are being regions are being asked to cover up well and use mosquito repellents at all times. There is no vaccine or medication to prevent getting infected, so the only way to stay safe for now is to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes.  

While Zika fever itself has mild symptoms and is treated by rest, it can cause birth defects to the fetus if contracted by pregnant women. In fact, the governments of some countries like Colombia, Ecuador, and El Salvador have recommended that women postpone getting pregnant until more discoveries are made about the risks. But for those who are already pregnant, Megadose is trying to provide a viable solution.

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