Stealth Wear: Counter-Surveillance Clothing

The line between fashion and technology is getting blurrier all the time, and it’s no secret that Google Glass and the iWatch are going to shift the way we think about accessories forever. But secrets that can be kept are still a source of inspiration, for a small handful of designers at least. As our right to privacy shrinks, counter-surveillance clothing is causing a stir and London-based artist Adam Harvey is leading the way.

Alongside his day job as a design professor, Harvey’s work on ‘Stealth Wear’ thwarts technology’s attempts to record our every move. His OFF Pocket phone case, which launches online this month, blocks out all incoming and outgoing signals. For the modern day renegade, this means it will stop anyone from tracking your movements via your mobile phone.

But Harvey’s conceptual designs are even more interesting; he’s worked with his OFF Pocket collaborator Johanna Bloomfield on an ‘Anti-Drone’ collection of clothing - mostly cloaks and hoodies - that are cut in a special fabric. The lightweight, metallic material reflects heat, making it more difficult for drones (which use thermal imaging) to track the wearer.

He’s also developing a line of anti-paparazzi accessories, with a CamoflashTM Clutch that doubles up as a shield from flash photography. Harvey hasn’t released a huge amount of information about the patent-pending prototype yet, but it looks like holding it up would reflect the light from the flash, obscuring your face and protecting your privacy from unwanted attention.

And Adam Harvey’s not alone. While he’s dabbled in using extreme hair styling and make-up to sidestep facial-recognition technology, Japan’s National Institute of Informatics has taken the idea a step further. Their ‘privacy visor’ uses lights, similar to infrared, that the human eye can’t see but which will block the wearer’s features from face-detection devices. Much, much less stylish than Adam Harvey’s designs, or even the Google Glass prototypes, it’s more of a practical accessory than a fashion statement – but the idea, once perfected, could one day be transplanted into a trend-aware pair of sunglasses.

Most of these designs are still in the concept stage, limited to galleries and design studios. But even if they’re never widely produced, their existence shows that the fear of surveillance is strong enough to drive intense creativity. Could Stealth Wear be the start of a pro-privacy movement that brings fashion and technology even closer together? 

Images from http://ahprojects.com/