Sometimes something wonderful and unexpected walks into your life. That’s exactly how I felt about these awesome microcontroller leggings that wandered into my booth at MakerFaire. Now that’s what I call a flex circuit! The leggings actually have a great story, as told to me by their wearer, Julie Covello (DJ Shakey). She knew Teagan Thais (Tyeze) as a DJ and Producer, and they both attended the Dubspot school in NYC. For Teagan, this was a very influential time period.

I was in NYC studying music production at Dubspot, so my brain was in frequency land 24 hours/7 days a week, which transpired into my desire to translate this auditory world into a wearable, visual one, which I like to call “Frequency Fashion”.

Teagan and some friends formed a social network and a synergistic group of companies to handle this combination of music/art/fashion collaboration, making, and sales. Basically artists get together on the social network to share ideas, and their resulting mixes become printed wearable art. With Teagan’s interest in “Frequency Fashion” running strong, she decided to reach out to Julie, knowing she was connected with a hardware inspired music movement.

Back in 2005 I started an event called the Warper Party along with my friend, Matt Moldover, to showcase forward thinking electronic musicians who enhance their stage presence by making their own software, hardware, controllers, or by using existing tools in a more dynamic way. This movement we eventually named “Controllerism”. Every major music movement has it’s “look”  ie:  punk, hip hop, reggae, etc., but “Controllerism” doesn’t have a look yet, and I want to spearhead this aspect of our music culture; I don’t believe a movement can gain recognition without it!!

So, as you might guess, Julie came up with the very pattern, “Mini Ra”,  she’s wearing. If you look closely, you can even see the chip and some I/O markings. She also contributed to the designs below of  “Mojo”, inspired by a controller, and “Real Big Boss”, inspired by waveforms.

Since Teagan eats collaboration for breakfast every morning, I decided to find out what she thought about the future of fashion. She’s got some ideas.

It’s truly endless where frequency and tech fashion will go.  I fantasize about dresses with pinky sized projectors sewn into the hem for spontaneous public interventions, frequency shirts splattered with DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and solar powered speakers built into the pockets. The interconnectivity and weaving of technology with fashion will only grow deeper, more intricate & more integrated.  It’s all about collaboration, pushing the limits with other humans, exploring our consciousness together and encouraging fearless, shameless tenacity to never stop pushing forward and expanding self.

If that doesn’t get your fired up to create, nothing will. Check out more of the tech inspired clothing at Burning Artists Collective. Then, start thinking about a shirt you would  like to hack to wear with your leggings. I think a few LED sequins might be appropriate, and you can find out how to use them with our LED Sequins learning guide. Then you just need to grab your friend and start collaborating.

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!