The company that has pioneered digital image editing has unveiled a surprising new direction with Project Primrose, featuring materials that can change color and patterns in real time.
Eight years on from when the world was split over a blue/black or white/gold dress, Adobe announces that it can actually be both. With reflective light-diffuser modules on oversized sequins to essentially create a wearable digital display, the flexible, low-energy material has the potential to transform fashion.
"Project Primrose, displayed at MAX as an interactive dress, makes this possible with wearable and flexible, non-emissive textiles which allow an entire surface to display content created with Adobe Firefly, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Stock, and Adobe Illustrator," said the Adobe communications team.
Unveiled at the Adobe MAX 2023 event in Los Angeles last week, the wearable tech was demonstrated by Chirstine Dierk, who was part of the team that designed the futuristic material.
How it works, exactly, comes down to both reflectiveness of the material and its composition. Each sequin of the dress acts as a miniature screen made out of smart materials, allowing the person wearing it to display different patterns they've created, which can even animate in real time.
While it's still in the proof-of-concept stage, Project Primrose holds great potential in broad fields such as military attire, advertising and, of course, fashion.
While it might be the death knell for sandwich boards, Adobe has its sights set on materials beyond the catwalk, looking at the potential for this material use in furnishings and decor as well.
The research was published in the journal UIST '22: Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, and you can check out the Project Primrose dress in action in the video below.
Source: Adobe
