Aerogel-embedded puffer jacket by Vollebak creates an ultralight insulation that protects you from -30°C cold

As someone who has lived in a tropical country all her life, I have no concept of what it means to be really, really cold. Sure, I’ve been to countries where I need to wear thick jackets but I’ve never experienced negative degree weather and have not been able to appreciate jackets that can keep you warm and protect you from freezing weather. Down is one of the most popular materials for these kinds of jackets but it’s not really friendly to animals. So a puffer jacket that uses better materials is always welcome.

Designer: Vollebak

The Aerogel Puffer is made from the lightest solid material in the world which is actually used to line spacesuits and insulate electronics. Aerogel has individual neoprenes that are 10,000 thinner than human hair so it is also pretty lightweight and air will not be able to pass through it. The jacket itself has advanced synthetic insulation and its outer shell uses the ultra lightweight yarn so that you’ll be protected from extreme cold weather (even -30 degrees!) but it also won’t weigh you down totally. The insulation fibers and the aerogel trap the air pockets to your body and is also the thermal barrier you’ll need to protect you from the cold air.

The woven yarns used in the jacket (which weighs under 1 gram for 1 kilometer) has a finishing called circe which actually serves as a seal so that weather elements like wind, snow, and light rain will not be able to go through. It also means that your body heat and the insulation it creates will not be able to get out, so you remain warm and snuggly when experiencing some slightly unpleasant weather. You get five zipped pockets, two large ones on the side to keep your hands warm and the others to hold your stuff like phone, wallet, keys, etc.

The Aerogel Puffer looks like most other puffer jackets but it’s supposedly lighter than the ones made from down. The ultralight water-repellant and windproof jacket has a regular fit and is available in various sizes from extra small to double extra large. It’s available in a black edition and a white one. If ever I would be staying somewhere that is really, really cold, this can be an interesting accessory to have, especially when I’m not used to actual cold weather (and I want to protect the ducks).

The post Aerogel-embedded puffer jacket by Vollebak creates an ultralight insulation that protects you from -30°C cold first appeared on Yanko Design.

This award-winning expanding garment was designed for pregnant women to wear to term

Designed to be comfortably worn while a pregnant mother carries their child, the ‘Retractable Garment’ by IU+ Design features a unique fabric construction that expands aesthetically as the wearer’s body does. A winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award, the garment relies on a series of uniquely positioned fabric cutouts that grow to form a pattern that is revealed the bigger the baby bump gets!

“Using pattern variations, the retractable garment meets the functional demands of pregnant women throughout the entire process”, say lead designers Shen Jiye and Chen Yujie. “In other words, the garment witnesses the entire pregnancy.”

Designer: ShenZhen IU+ Design Co., Ltd.

“The abdomen area of the garment is made to be flexible and adjustable to accommodate the various stages of pregnancy. It is made with a certain tension that allows the fabric to stretch over the baby bump, and the patterns expand to fit the shape of the stomach, creating a one-of-a-kind look”, the designers mention. Moreover, the garment can even be worn after a child is born, thereby reducing unnecessary fashion waste.

This concept, while unique, builds on an underlying idea that clothes should be designed to last as long as possible while accommodating growth and developmental factors. A similar project, titled Petit Pli, used pleated fabric that allowed the clothes to expand as a child grew, enabling them to wear the same clothes for years instead of mere months.

The Retractable Garment is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2022.

The post This award-winning expanding garment was designed for pregnant women to wear to term first appeared on Yanko Design.

Your clothes could soon be a limitless battery source to juice-up wearables

We have a limitless resource in the form of energy on the planet and in the universe. Keeping it within the realms of planet earth, for the time being, researchers around the world have long been on the lookout for alternative sources of energy that capture energy from the most unusual resources.

In a similar endeavor, researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University have devised a novel way to capture the energy dissipated by our body and turn it into a battery for numerous uses.

Designer: Nanyang Technological University

So, you could be charging up a wearable lithium-ion battery as you run, walk or while breathing. Consequently, the stored energy can be used to charge gadgets. And where is the energy stored with all this technological goodness? In the clothes one wears. Yes, the researchers have created a prototype of this never-before-seen fabric capable of harvesting energy. According to them a 3cm by 4cm piece of such fabric can generate energy equivalent to powering 100 light-emitting diodes for around 5 months. That’s around 2.34 watts of power per square meter. Now that’s a lot of energy that otherwise goes to waste.

The durable material made out of polymer converts mechanical stress into electrical energy. Things like pressing, stretching, or squeezing the fabric with any kind of body movements, 24×7. So, you could be a source of energy as long as you are running, moving around your arms or legs, or even while tossing and turning in your deepest sleep. This is the perfect development for the power-hungry wearables of today that demand an abundant energy resource in a very small form factor. Your clothes generate energy without you even being conscious about it is the ideal solution.

Moving onto the technical part of the body battery, the researchers screen-printed electrode pattern on the material made out of silver and styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene used in bicycle handlebar grips. Then they attached it to a piezoelectric nanofiber which generates an electrical charge when moved or touched. They fitted the fine fabric with perovskite material to increase the electrical conductivity. The smart textile was tested for durability by washing and tossing around since it is waterproof as well.

So, we are slowly inching towards times where Matrix-like smart energy generating systems could rule the future. Human batteries are powered by smart textiles that won’t weather with use, to be precise.

The post Your clothes could soon be a limitless battery source to juice-up wearables first appeared on Yanko Design.

This appliance envisions the future of folding and sterilizing children’s clothes

We have become more attuned to the sometimes unsanitary conditions of our homes in recent years. While harmful microorganisms may have been there all this time, their effects have been placed under a microscope thanks to concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus. There has been an uptick in interest and sales of air purifiers as well as the new breed of UV-C sanitizers. But while these take care of the air we breathe, they don’t really handle other places where germs, viruses, and other harmful substances can gather, especially on different kinds of surfaces. Clothing for children, in particular, requires special handling because of who wears them, and this simple yet innovative concept offers a way to ease the burden off parents and automate how clothes are kept neat and clean.

Designers: Junsik Oh, Da-yeon Choi, Kim Eun-seong

Perhaps next to taking out the trash, one of the most disliked chores is doing the laundry, probably because it’s actually a multi-step process that goes beyond just washing clothes. Even with smart washing machines and dryers, there are parts of the chore that can be considered manual and menial labor. And as if folding clothes and putting them away weren’t already tedious enough, people now also have to be mindful of keeping those clothes sanitized and germ-free.

The latter is a growing concern among parents today, especially with all the worries about viruses and germs in the air and sticking to surfaces. Anti-bacterial laundry soap only works during washing, but the clothes can be exposed any time afterward. That can even happen while a parent or sibling is folding a child’s clothes, potentially putting younger and more susceptible members of the family in danger.

FOL:U is an appliance concept that tries to do away with both the tediousness as well as the fears when folding clothes. It actually doesn’t fold clothes but rolls them up in a bundle for more space-efficient storage. It also sanitizes those clothes before they’re rolled, and you don’t even have to touch a single part of the fabric at any point in time.

The idea is that you’d pick up newly washed clothes with tongs that come with FOL:U and mount them inside. When you’re ready, you can soak the clothes in UV-C light to sanitize them. There’s even a tray on top that will let you also sanitize other items like baby bottles or toys simultaneously to save on time and energy. The machine then rolls the clothes into bundles that can be kept at the bottom of the tall box, which could also be sanitized along with the next batch of clothes.

With UV-C sanitization becoming more common inside households, it might only be a matter of time before appliance manufacturers turn their attention toward this use case. FOL:U might not be the most efficient machine for folding, and some might disagree about rolling clothes, but it does address the need for automating other parts of doing the laundry. It won’t be long before we reach a point where the entire process could be automated from start to finish, just like in some cartoons that portray future home appliances in a comical way.

The post This appliance envisions the future of folding and sterilizing children’s clothes first appeared on Yanko Design.

Hurdle Hanger for Pants 2.0 removes the stress of keeping your closet tidy

This deceptively simple yet outrageously innovative hanger leaves no more excuses for keeping your room and closet organized.

There seems to be an almost natural compulsion to turn our clothes into UFOs the moment we step out of them, flinging them onto the bed or just cramming them into drawers and closets. Pants are often the victims of this procrastinating behavior because of the complicated way they demand to be hanged properly. Of course, that only delays the inevitable when we have to eventually sort out the mess that has become our rooms. Thankfully, some people have put serious thought, research, and work into solving that problem for the good of humankind. And like many genius inventions, the solution looks so simple that you are left scratching your head, wondering why no one has done it before. Fortunately, someone finally did and has even improved this hanger so that you will no longer lose your pants to the black hole that is your wardrobe.

Designers: Swen Hong & Henry Kwak

Click Here to Buy Now: 20 packs for $39 $49 (20% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left!

We got the chance to meet the first Hurdle Hanger in 2019 and were definitely impressed. One of the recommended ways to defeat procrastination is to reduce the friction or hurdles in completing a task. Despite its ironic name, it takes literally a second or two to hang your pants, just the same amount of time you need to fling it to who knows where. The time savings also add up when you consider you’ll be picking up those same pants in the future anyway.

Version 2.0 of this ingenious organizing wonder refines the design while still keeping the signature features that made its predecessor a huge success. For example, it now uses a stainless steel swivel hook, so you don’t have to stress whether you’re hanging your clothes in the right direction. The design is also more streamlined to accommodate more than just your pants. Contrary to its name, the hanger can hold a whole outfit, from tops to bottoms to belts and caps.

The latter is made possible thanks to the signature U-type hook that’s now wider to accommodate more accessories. The Hurdle Hanger 2.0 is still made from high-quality recyclable ABS plastic, so you’re assured that it’s going to last longer than some of your clothes. High-hanging and impossibly thin, the hangers leave more room for your clothes rather than taking up precious space. Plus, the hanger’s open design makes it super easy to hang just about anything you can think of other than your pants.

Whether you need to hang your clothes in a snap or prepare your outfit for the entire week, the Hurdle Hanger for Pants 2.0 removes any and all hurdles to keeping your closet from becoming an unconquerable jungle of fabric. But more than just keeping your living space neat and tidy, it also helps reduce the stress of daily life. After all, the last thing you probably want to do on the weekend is to organize your room, so why not save yourself the time and work by spending just a second or two hanging those pants after you’ve taken them off.

Click Here to Buy Now: 20 packs for $39 $49 (20% off). Hurry, less than 48 hours left! Rasied over $100,000.

The post Hurdle Hanger for Pants 2.0 removes the stress of keeping your closet tidy first appeared on Yanko Design.

Add fragrance and versatility to your wardrobe with this hanger that rotates like the hands of a clock

It’s not a great feeling when you take out a shirt hanging in the closet and it’s crushed or smelling of the washing detergent! This is not just limited to shirts, almost all our apparel go through this same ordeal. To give us an intriguing alternative to hanging clothes more seemingly, so they don’t lose their ironing, and are deodorized like the fragrance of the sky by time: Dawn, morning, evening, night; a Korean designer has conceived the Ploud.

Ploud is basically a versatile hanger, which allows you to hang clothes in two ways: Hang them as you would traditionally or fasten them conveniently. For instance shirts, pants, coats, dresses, etc can be hung as usual, while the accessories like ties, mufflers, bags, hats etc can be clipped. This interesting hanger concept is pretty different from a plethora of hangers we have seen and used in our time. This is nothing like the usual plastic, metal, wooden or travel, lingerie, dress or pant hangers out there.

Designer: SooA Choi

The Ploud features a hanger body – circular control unit – and two hanger bars – rotating arms – on either side that can rotate from being fastened together to stretch out straight on either side of the body, which has the metal hanging hook protruding on the top. The hanger design is inspired by a wall clock: the body holds the mechanics, while the bars rotate like the hands of a clock. The modified hanger arms can be used in any position in the rotating radius to accommodate a large number of essentials. So owing to its use cases and streamlined design for portability, the Ploud is one hanger for all your needs.

The hanger’s arms are interestingly designed to clip off in the middle. This space allows you to stick in a fragrance of choice and close back. You get interchangeable scent sticks you can choose to replace at any time. The bars have anti-slip rubber pads at their ends, which can be rotated up and down depending on how you’d like to use them. Ploud will not help you pick the perfect outfit or increase your wardrobe space, but the interesting hanger designed in eight different colors, will provide versatility and leave your clothes fragrant all the time. Will it eventually allow you to cut down on your perfume budget is something we’ll only know when the Ploud is a marketable product!

The post Add fragrance and versatility to your wardrobe with this hanger that rotates like the hands of a clock first appeared on Yanko Design.

This cleverly designed chair encourages you to hang your clothes on it!

Ask a designer what the purpose of a chair is and they’ll throw fancy words about lumbar support and complementing interior spaces. Ask a bachelor what the purpose of a chair is and you’ll get two answers – Sitting, and draping clothes.

The Jules chair by Sarah Willemart explores this unintended yet undeniably popular function of the chair. Designed to function as both a chair and a makeshift wardrobe, the Jules is a functional, aesthetic seating device with a new twist. The backrest of the chair comes with an unusual shape that actively promotes you to hang your clothes, from coats and pants, to even hats and handkerchiefs or scarves (or babushkas – a word I recently learnt). The backrest’s innovative shape comes with a bar on the top for hanging clothes, and a hole running through the cushion for you to hang kerchiefs through. The backrest even has shoulder-like proportions, letting you easily drape a coat on it without worrying about it losing its shape or getting wrinkled. Ingenious, eh? Sign me up for three of them.

Designer: Sarah Willemart

Amazon’s $25 custom T-shirt service uses virtual body doubles

Amazon has opened a custom clothing store, allowing all users in the US to buy T-shirts that conform to their measurements and specifications. Made for You requires you to submit details about your weight, height and body type, along with two photos...

Disney cashes in on baby Yoda with crude online merch

It's not surprising that Disney went without merch for The Child (aka baby Yoda) when The Mandalorian premiered, since it would have spoiled one of the streaming show's most adorable surprises. However, the first offerings are... rushed, to put it...