If you one day find yourself strutting down the street in an
inflatable dress or peeking out from beneath a hood embedded with a
digital camera, you may have Diana Eng to thank.
The 22-year-old designer, recently featured on the popular Bravo reality television show "Project Runway," favors fashion that's influenced by math, science and technology. A geek's geek who discovered the joys of math by second grade, she wants to make the fashion-minded more interested in technology and the fractal-minded more interested in fashion.
Her portfolio features, among other tech-influenced designs,
garments designed using biomimetics, the science of applying the laws of
nature to technology; a hoodie with a wireless heart monitor and an
embedded camera that snaps pictures as a wearer's heart rate increases;
and the gown, fitted with a hacked hand vacuum and a series of valves,
that inflates and deflates according to the desired silhouette. Eng
designed the garment with classmate Emily Albinski while a student of
apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design.
"Prior to inflation, it's supposed to be a kind of straight-fitting
dress," Eng explained during a phone interview from New
York, where she currently works as a freelance designer and is busy
preparing for "Seamless: Computational Couture," a Feb. 1 fashion show at the Boston Museum of Science, where she will one of the featured designers. "It inflates and becomes bell-shaped."
It's this sort of vision that earned Eng a spot on the Emmy-nominated
"Project Runway," where up-and-coming designers compete through a series
of fashion-related challenges for prizes that include a mentorship with the Banana Republic design team and $100,000 to start a clothing line.
During auditions, one judge declared, "Diana, we are very entranced by
you."
So, apparently, were viewers, who anointed Eng a darling of the geek set
soon after the second season of the show started airing, on Dec. 7. Eng
was booted from "Project Runway" in January after losing a challenge
that involved designing a day-to-evening dress for Banana Republic. But
for anyone trying to crack the high-pressure, tough-to-tackle world of
fashion, being on the show at all can open doors on Seventh Avenue and
beyond.
"The show is an unparalleled opportunity," Tim Gunn, chairman of the
Department of Fashion Design at the New York-based Parsons: The New School for Design and a mentor to the show's contestants, told CNET News.com. "Aside from the tremendous exposure...the show is a fashion boot camp that helps each designer learn more about their design philosophy, aesthetic point-of-view, and practical methodologies."
"Although we saw her struggle periodically, she projected a seriousness of purpose that was unfaltering."
--Tim Gunn, chairman, Department of Fashion Design, Parsons: The New School for Design
"Diana used the show wisely and strategically," Gunn added. "Although we
saw her struggle periodically, she projected a seriousness of purpose
that was unfaltering. Diana captured the attention of the fashion
industry and viewers fell in love with her."
The young Eng, who beat out thousands of competitors for a shot at fame
on the New York runway, says she gets recognized by strangers on the
street up to three times a day--a semi-celebrity status she seems able,
and determined, to take in stride.
"She's so deeply nerdy, I love it," one viewer wrote on the message
boards of the Web site Fans of Reality TV, "and I appreciate the
ambitious nature of her designs."
Wrote another, "I love her ideas; I love her self-described 'nerd
fashion designer' vibe. I want one of those camera hoodies!"
No stranger to geekdom
In fact, many of the hundreds of mostly positive viewer e-mails she
receives daily, Eng says, come from "geek girls" and "geek boys" seeking
advice on technology, fashion or both.
Eng is no stranger to geekdom--and she wears the geek label as proudly
as she dons threads by favorite designers like Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe and Kenneth Cole. The daughter of an architect mother and a civil-engineer
father, she was by second grade dreaming of a Ph.D. in math. In middle
school and high school, she was a science fair devotee who spent five
years studying spirolaterals, figures obtained by repeatedly drawing a
basic shape (she later lectured Florida math teachers on how to use
these as teaching tools). Last February, she traveled to Bath University
in England, where she studied TRIZ--a Russian theory of inventive
problem solving--in the mechanical engineering department.
A fan of Japanese animation and a gearhead who not only loves her
gadgets but loves knowing just how they work, Eng always keeps
Though I am glad that the shoes with LEDs has gone away, I think toning down and finding a more main-stream consumer friendly way to integrate innovation can be helpful.
I mean, with out someone going ooh teflon in clothes, some clumsy business men and moms with toddlers would be lost.
Personally, I'm all about my night reflective and breatheable running-wear.
I love Ms. Eng's proactive attitude towards marketing to the female client. We make up the vast majority of purchasing power in the US, and female driven products have been a slow crawl (e.g. women friendly razors like Venus). I hope she does get her chance to make Mr. Jobs that tech suit.
Diana has a seriously marketable concept on her hands, and I would believe that it is extremeley rare to find a woman who is so technologically savvy and fashion educated. If you paired her with a great team, and gave her some startup money, she could with out a doubt turn out some seriously profitable items. Tim Gunn was right in saying that the electronics must be seamlessly integrated. Tap the Japanese! They'll be a huge help and love doing it. Give her a go at it! Good luck Diana!
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The Silicon Valley online payments startup grew by 1,000 percent last year and is hopeful it can repeat that level of growth this year. To do that, it's had to move away from its early friends-and-family roots and embrace small businesses.
Chamtech's spray-on antenna uses a nano material to provide a low-power boost to antenna range. The wireless-in-a-can product may some day bring an end to unsightly cell towers.
EnerG2 opens a plant to make an engineered carbon that will improve performance of energy storage devices and make storage for start-stop hybrid cars less expensive.
style? If nerds go style, would style need to go nerd to stay hip?
In all seriousness, I just want my clothes to look good. My shirt
doesn't need to blink, and my pants don't need to play music.
Thoughts?
I mean, with out someone going ooh teflon in clothes, some clumsy business men and moms with toddlers would be lost.
Personally, I'm all about my night reflective and breatheable running-wear.
on her hands, and I would believe that it
is extremeley rare to find a woman who is
so technologically savvy and fashion educated.
If you paired her with a great team, and gave her some startup money, she could with out a doubt turn out some seriously profitable items.
Tim Gunn was right in saying that the electronics
must be seamlessly integrated. Tap the Japanese!
They'll be a huge help and love doing it.
Give her a go at it! Good luck Diana!