Clothes

Marilyn Monroe's star power is never more evident than when her memorabilia items cross the auction block. Will her "Happy Birthday Mr President" dress break records at auction on 17 November?

​​Pretty much all of us have them – the forgotten clothes that we never wear. They really should be sent to charity, if only we could remember to do so. That's why a group at Birmingham City University has created what it calls the "Internet of Clothes."

"Imagine handing over your laundry to a friend who folds it for you" is the rather deft way in which FoldiMate describes the benefits of its robotic clothes folding machine. The firm says its device can cut in half the time spent on the laborious task of clothes folding, albeit for a hefty outlay.

Peggy is a smart clothes-peg prototype that uses a number of sensors and local weather information to tell you when the washing is dry and ping you when rain's on the way to prevent you drying the same load twice.

Most jackets offer very little usefulness beyond their ability to keep you warm and dry, save for a few pockets to keep a few basic items safe. But the BauBax Jacket is a travel jacket intended to offer a little more, with 14 different uses beyond a jacket's standard capabilities.

In 2012, the Scrubba Wash Bag was launched as the world’s smallest clothes washing machine. Now, the team behind it is launching the Scrubba Pack, which also functions as the user’s backpack.

This year's Google I/O gave us Android M and updated Google Cardboard, along with free and unlimited photo storage. But it wouldn't be Google if there weren't also some moonshots in there. We go hands-on with one of them, Project Jacquard.

The Yirego Drumi is a compact foot-pedal-powered washing machine. Requiring no electricity, it's designed for use by students, cabin-goers, car-campers or anyone else without ready access to powered washing facilities.

No matter how sure you are of your size, buying clothes online always carries the risk that they won't fit correctly when they arrive. So Italian fashion startup Xyze has developed a smart measuring tape that records your body's dimensions and translates this to a brand's particular size chart.

Stephen Romanin is the outdoors type. He loves mountain biking, skiing, and taking motorcycles off the beaten track – pursuits that led him on a mission to create a lightweight heated garment that can keep the cold at bay without interfering with the activity at hand.

One of the hassles of doing laundry is the fact that you can't wash all your clothes at once. This week at CES, however, LG unveiled a partial solution to that problem – the company's new TWIN Wash system lets you do two loads at a time.

We've certainly seen portable washing machines before here at Gizmag, although they've tended to be quite small and/or human-powered. The Venus, however, takes another approach. It's an electric agitator, that goes into a bucket supplied by the user.