A Modern Mood Ring - Cap Style - Design Bureau

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A Modern Mood Ring – Cap Style

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

Image courtesy of The Unseen

Text by Amanda Koellner

When Swarovski approached The Unseen—a luxury design house that uses specific materials to mesh biological, chemical, and electronic science into fashion—to take a fresh look at the technological potential behind the iconic brand’s synthetic stones, The Unseen’s Lauren Bowker wasn’t sure what to expect.

She certainly couldn’t have predicted that through this collaboration, she and her team would discover that the gemstone black spinel is so similar to the human bone that it can be “compatible with the human, enabling each stone, when worn, to act as a conduction insulator, absorbing energy loss from the head.”

“It was a happy accident,” she says. “We knew that this stone would be much more sensitive than a regular stone, so we did some research to look into the brain’s activity and how the black spinel reacted. It was a case of sitting and playing with it until every person that wore it result- ed in a different pattern.”

Bowker, who has a chem- istry background and has worked with “every mate- rial under the sun,” says that projects like this de- fine The Unseen’s core mis- sion. “For us, everything has to both have a purpose and look good,” she says. “We rely, 50/50, on the technology being great and the design looking great.” She also says the design house strives to educate people on various wearable technologies (“It doesn’t all have to be wires—it can be more poetic. It doesn’t have to be plastic.”), as well as to create something that inspires people to look at the world differently and take note of what’s around them.

The 4,000-gemstone cap, which “becomes a reflection of the inner human thought,” will remain an exhibition piece with the prime purpose of showcasing The Unseen’s technology and Swarovski’s research—for now. “We’ve had a mass influx of people wanting to buy the piece or wanting us to create something for them,” Bowker says. As a result, The Unseen will soon release a new product line that will allow people the chance to buy into the technology they’ve recently developed— and, we hope, indulge in mood garments of all varieties.

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