This dress looks like quartz with its jagged tulle and shimmering sequins, but watch it glow with a twist of the body. This is Gyro Dress by Mike Rugo and his partners Jake Alton and Jess Tran. The dress uses an Arduino to control a LED strip in the bodice, as well as the LEDs cascading down the interior of the skirt. The LEDs in the skirt are especially interesting because they appear to have special diffusers, or they may merely be small segments of LED strip that are dangling chandelier style. It’s a great look either way. The responsive part of the dress comes into play with a gyro sensor, something that I’ve utilized for my Hunger Games Dress to produce a flame effect on a certain spin force. Often in dresses an accelerometer is chosen, which results in frequent glowing LEDs because it is easy to trigger. With a gyrometer, a twirl or spin is something more deliberate, allowing more control for the wearer. If you’d like to experiment with some twirling, check out our Flora 9-DOF Accelerometer/Gyroscope/Magnetoscope. This is a stitchable/solderable sensor that can be used with our Flora Microcontroller to create effects in your clothing. Decide what type of movement will blink lights or turn on a sound and then create the code to make it happen. Your fashion future is just a sensor away.

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!