Diana Eng's Inflatable Dress

Diana Eng is probably one of the most interesting people in fashion these days because she's pushing math and technology into fashion, creating wearable computers that appeal to many more people than most wearable hackers could imagine. Diana has done much more geeky things, using biometrics and cameras, but this piece really jumped out at me because it looks gorgeous, and isn't that complicated a premise for would be fashion nerds to experiment with.

...fitted with a hacked hand vacuum and a series of valves, that inflates and deflates according to the desired silhouette. Eng designed the garment with classmate Emily Albinski while a student of apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design.

"Prior to inflation, it's supposed to be a kind of straight-fitting dress," Eng explained during a phone interview from New York, where she currently works as a freelance designer and is busy preparing for "Seamless: Computational Couture," a Feb. 1 fashion show at the Boston Museum of Science, where she will one of the featured designers. "It inflates and becomes bell-shaped."

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