This Clothing Blocks Your Calls + Makes You Turn Off Your Phone
We’ve been looking to fill up our virtual shopping carts with clothing and accessories that enhance our digital life, marrying it in a happily ever after scenario with our real one. Give us a couple shirts that track our fitness, bangles that buzz us if we have incoming emails, dresses that charge up our devices so we’ll never be lost without them — just basically keep us connected to all the alerts and every single notification at all times. But, um, remember silence? That was good too, and now there’s a designer making wearables that will help us, well, force us to ignore our phones.
Kunihiko Morinaga, a Tokyo-based designer, debuted the “anti-wearables” at Toronto Fashion Week this year with Anrealage, clothing that kills incoming calls. The duds are made with special radio frequency shielding fabric that blocks electromagnetic waves. That means that whenever your phone is in a pocket of one of the garments, it no longer gets service.
If the thought of your new favorite coat cutting you off from all outside contact makes you feel faint, understand that Morinaga is actually doing it for your own good. Just like a designer might create clothing meant to protect you from the elements, these garments shield you from the “storm of information coming at us most days.”
The clothing is actually some of the more fashion forward we’ve seen from something this high (or low?) tech-minded. The sleek, effortless tailoring comes from Morinaga’s technique that uses laser cutting and heat crimping in lieu of stitching or sewing. Intricately cut layers are affixed with adhesive on the backside, making this officially the coolest “no sew” project we’ve ever seen.
We celebrate the convenience that comes along with being so well-connected, but anyone that’s been out on a date or out with friends or seated at the family dinner table and noticed a moment when, yes, everyone is on their phone, knows we could benefit from shutting off. At least once in awhile when our Facebook buds are in the same real life room as we are.
Just place your smartphone in any of the pockets on the garments and you’re ready to disconnect from the virtual world, live chat IRL, “face time” sans cell, stop and smell the flowers and chill and taste the brunch.
Pieces from Anrealage (also part of the Focus: Life Gear by Trident project) are not for sale yet, but you can check out the line on exhibit right now in Toronto. It’s probably a little cheaper than jet setting to Sweden to check yourself into the Internet Emergency Room.
Would you wear clothing that turns your phone off? Who in your life needs to slip on one of these?
