This babydoll style dress is a swirl of rainbows thanks to maker (and wearer) Gedeane G.S. Kenshima. She is a Master’s student studying Automation and Process Control at Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo (IFSP). Her dress is inspired by a Japanese LED display dress that wowed her on social media. Gedeane is an engineer with awesome tech skills, but she knew she would need some help on the sewing side. So, she asked her Aunt who is a seamstress to join her.
The dress came together perfectly, but the tricky part was building the structure for the dress. Luckily Gedeane was in the right place at the right time.
I had to think about the support structure. I built it after seeing a lingerie shop window at a mall near my house. I used wire, electrical tape, and tried to use a little solder. My mother helped me build the wire structure.
With the frame together, she attached Neopixels connected to a Wemos Mini Board (ESP8266). Although this creates perfect rainbows, the engineer is hoping to install a new board built by friends called ESPWear. The WiFi capability will allow the dress to be controlled through the audience for fun presentations. This is important to Gedeane since she likes to promote tech.
I have been doing projects with wearables since 2015, inspired by Adafruit projects. I was inspired by projects like LED Ampli-Tie, Flora-Brella and NeoPixel Tiara to develop my own projects. This has led me to minister to Arduino’s lectures and workshops, wearables, Internet of Things and Women in Technology.
It has been great to meet Gedeane and it sounds like her family is definitely on board with her making. Looking forward to hearing about more work from this engineer. Hopefully you are inspired as this project is just one example of the many things you can create with Neopixels. Are you ready to add lights to your clothing?
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!
