Living Shirt

Triggering fictions for future summer comfort

This project is now archived and was part of DDW21

This project is part of
FASHION, WEARABLES AND TEXTILE INNOVATION

Living Shirt

Marina Toeters

Living Shirt is a fictive concept of a garment containing living plants. It is part of an imagined dress line that supports commuting to work by bicycle or on foot. While the plants live on nutrients and water from the wearer’s sweat, they provide cooling through shelter and evaporation.

What if sweating at work was something positive?

Due to climate change, the frequencies, temperatures, and durations of heat waves and levels of solar gain in the Netherlands are expected to increase. How Dutch households will adapt to this change is still uncertain. Air-conditioning is not the only or best way to deal with a warming climate. Well-known alternatives are shading, ventilation, heat storage and taking a siesta. At the current crossroad, it is important to ask where Dutch practices of summer comfort are heading and whether and how they can be steered in desirable directions. To widen the discussion around options for summer comfort we present three fictive, triggering concepts for the future of summer comfort. Living Shirt is one of the three concepts. The full set is presented in the Drivers of Change exhibition at the TU/e Campus.