There are a lot of theories about the rise of the selfie – a healthy celebration of an empowered self, or dysfunctional ‘self-image masturbation’ for an insecure psyche. But perhaps the best way to understand the selfie is simply as apparel. The selfie is virtual clothing for our digital age, it dresses us up and communicates to the world who we are, who we’d like to be – like our clothes and fashion choices.
So if your selfie collection is your digital fashion wardrobe, and your selfies play the same communicative role as your clothes and fashion choices, then the selfie is the real story in ‘wearable tech’ – filtered and photoshopped digital clothes we use to manage our image.
So with this idea of the selfie as digital fashion apparel, as the real ‘wearable tech’, in mind, Frankfurt-based digital agency Syzygy has created an real-world open-source selfie t-shirt – wearable tech that lights up when selfie hashtags are posted online. It’s all a bit meta. But fun.
So forget for a moment the polemics over selfies, good, bad or jumped the shark, and have some fun with the selfie t-shirt!
The #SelfieShirt [EN] (2014) from SYZYGY Deutschland GmbH on Vimeo.
