Jasna Rokegem

The through-line

Rokegem's consistent argument is that clothing is about to stop being passive material and start being a computational surface. Her framing is that garments will become the layer through which people express, regulate and communicate identity, and that this is not decoration but infrastructure: "Fashion is the interface of the future" [1]. Everything else she says follows from that premise, whether it concerns neuroscience, machine learning, retail, or pollution.

The second half of the through-line is consolidation. The direction of travel she describes runs from many garments doing one thing each toward a single adaptive garment doing everything, on the model of the phone that absorbed the camera, the map and the music player. "It's one garment to rule them all" [1] is the compressed version of both the product vision and the environmental argument.

On the garment as a living interface

The claim is not that clothes will carry screens, but that they will behave like organisms. "Garments are becoming a living organism on its own, an extension of our body, and they start a new way of human communication" [1]. The technical picture she sketches for the next stage is a distributed one: AI garments acting like cells in a neural network, communicating with each other, reacting to environmental stimuli, and anticipating needs [1]. That last capacity is where she puts the most weight, describing a system in which "with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence our garment becomes smarter and smarter and it can know what you need before you do" [1].

On brainwaves and emotional transparency

Her 'Fashion on Brainwaves' work is presented as a first: "the first collection in the world that is visualizing your brain waves into morphing fashion" [1]. The mechanism is deliberately simple to state, an EEG device feeding a microcontroller so the wearer gets real-time neurofeedback on whether they are relaxed or stressed [1]. She is clear-eyed about what that does socially rather than only technically. Putting an internal state on the outside of the body inverts the protective function of clothing: "Although you're fully dressed, you can feel quite naked with your emotions on display" [1]. She treats this exposure as an inherent property of the medium rather than a bug to be engineered away.

The same brain-interface layer has uses she frames as practical rather than expressive. Such wearables already serve professional applications that demand deep concentration, and she projects them forward as a channel for communicating with children with autism or with people who struggle to focus [1].

On retail, holograms and the invisible

Rokegem extends the interface argument into how clothes are bought. Interactive holograms combined with 3D body scans would let a customer try any outfit without redressing, collapsing the physical friction of the fitting room [1]. She also points to a second use of the same visual technology: rendering the digital data connections that surround us but remain invisible to the eye [1].

On fashion's footprint and owning one garment

The environmental case is stated bluntly: "The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry in the whole world" [1]. Her answer is technological rather than behavioural. Digitalization and nanotechnology, in the form of hydrophobic, stain-resistant and UV-protective textiles that never need washing, would cut the footprint on three fronts at once by removing polluting fibres from the oceans, eliminating the electricity spent on washing machines, and reducing the volume of clothing people pack to travel [1]. The endpoint ties the sustainability argument back to the product one. The vision is owning a single adaptive garment, in the way one owns a single smartphone, that changes colour and form, regulates temperature, stays clean, and is connected to the brain [1].

Takeaways

• Treat clothing as an interface layer rather than a material product; the design question becomes what the garment senses, computes and communicates [1].
• Wearable neurofeedback is already viable in simple form: an EEG device feeding a microcontroller gives the wearer real-time signal on stress or relaxation [1].
• Externalising emotional state has a social cost designers should anticipate: "Although you're fully dressed, you can feel quite naked with your emotions on display" [1].
• The next architectural step is garments behaving as cells in a neural network, talking to each other and to environmental stimuli, and predicting needs before the wearer registers them [1].
• Brain-interface wearables have concrete non-fashion markets in high-concentration professional work and in communication with children with autism or people who struggle to focus [1].
• Holograms plus 3D body scanning remove the fitting room from retail entirely, letting a customer try any outfit without redressing [1].
• Nanotech textiles that never need washing attack fashion's footprint on three fronts at once: ocean fibres, washing-machine electricity and travel volume [1].
• The consolidation endgame is one adaptive garment per person, on the smartphone model, that shifts colour and form, regulates temperature, self-cleans and connects to the brain [1].