T-shirts and jeans please

After reading “Looking alive” By Thomas Hine, I became scared of two things. Karim Rashid, and his “Designs for a world in which we won’t know where the body ends and the machine begins”(Rashid). This fear goes back to a previous blog of mine about “Can’t we leave well enough alone”? I was born in 1978 amid the drab tans and puke greens of the design world. Bad colors mixed together and earthy themes that looked boring in my baby pictures. That was 20 years ago and obviously our tastes have evolved into what they are today. But Rashid’s views on the evolution of fashion scare me. It's not his use of bright colors or his flare for dressing flamboyant that make me ponder whether he is sane or not. It’s his thoughts about smart fashion, implanted technology, and invasive bodily inputs that make me think this guy is crazy.
Let it be know that I am t-shirt and jeans guy. Nothing is more comfortable to me than cotton on cotton. So maybe I might be a little biased about some of his thoughts. But I am never intimidated by dressing up and putting of some “fly’ gear on for a night on the town. Rarely do I expose what kind of mood I am really in; but if I did, I surely wouldn't want some micro chip depicting my mood. “Clothing will react to its wearer’s moods, while incorporating temperature controls, databases, and telecommunications capabilities”(Rashid).
Lets just say for example that your girlfriend of 5 wonderful years broke up with you. You have wallowed in obscurity for weeks dredging yourself in lovers’ sorrow that only of few of us could ever recover from. Your pride has finally allowed you to leave the comfort of home. You dress yourself in the latest fashion being 2020 after all. You jump out of the house for the first time in weeks, open to any possibility of escape from the hell you've been through. You get to the bar to drink yourself into happiness, but your shirt screams sorrow. In a world where social life is challenging enough, your shirt really should never be.
One other concern I have with Rashid’s aspect on the future of clothing is his fascination with imbedded technology in fashion.” I see technology being embedded in our bodies so that we become digital within ourselves”(Rashid). Speak for yourself buddy. Depicting life as neurological impulses that are electronically passed throughout you, Rashid seems to think that this phenomenon will be what people are expecting from their clothing in the future. I strongly disagree. I, like my friends, want two things from our clothing: To fit, and look stylish. Do we really want our cloths to be smart? Speaking for the 20-30 somethings worldwide, I don’t think we are ready for this virtual fashion world. Clothing and style is so complicated enough, why do we need to add technology to the mix?
Whether its Rashid or any other futuristic designer. Every facet of our live will continue to be pushed around by the intrigue of smart technology. Styles will come, fade and then come back again. And surly Levi Strauss dreams of jeans will never die. But in a world where slowly our lives are increasingly digitized, the soft touch of a cotton sweatshirt or the warmth of a nice fleece are homely comforts that shouldn’t be reinvented. Because to me there is nothing wrong with them in the first place, they serve a purpose and they work just fine.