As New York Fashion Week wraps up and London takes center stage, we’re strutting into the stylish world of espionage. This week we investigate couture’s covert charms from ‘smart’ clothes to the real-life fashion police and the art of disguise. Don't forget to explore our Archive and Share & Subscribe with your friends!
Smart ePants!
America’s stylish secret agents are investing $22m to transform ordinary clothes into tech-savvy garments. It’s the latest brainchild of the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. The plan is to incorporate ‘sensor systems’ into shirts, pants, socks, and underwear but are there any thorny privacy issues?
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Clothes offer cryptic clues about our personality, financial status, occupation, and age. They reveal secrets, send silent messages, and even communicate solidarity or rebellion. Since ancient times, clothing has been policed through dress codes and sumptuary laws for intriguing reasons. We’ve traced the psychology of fashion from 16th-century spymaster Francis Walsingham to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
American icon Bill Blass cut a glamorous figure in WWII, reading Vogue in his foxhole and sketching for Rio de Janeiro fashion houses in his spare time. Blass was on a deadly serious mission in Europe however, part of an innovative unit of artists, actors, and photographers known as the ‘Ghost Army’ who created tactical deception operations to defeat the Nazis.
‘Smart’ fashion has come a long way since the ‘80s when designer Harry Wainwright created a sweatshirt using fiber optics, leads, and a microprocessor to display color animations. Nike is working on self-cleaning shoes while Samsung patented a shirt that tracks symptoms of diseases. Smart clothing is fascinating but it can also collect data about your location, health, and habits. Here’s how to protect your privacy.
Bond author Ian Fleming instilled 007 with exquisite taste, mirroring Fleming’s love of elegant tailoring and Swiss watches. The naval intelligence officer wore his Rolex Explorer 1016 while writing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1962. “A gentleman’s choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Savile Row suit,” he once remarked. In Fleming’s honor, we sketch the evolution of 007’s iconic timepieces.
Fashion and espionage are inextricably linked. In the deadly game of spying, disguises come in many forms from ‘going gray’ - dressing to blend into your surroundings - to the CIA’s 45-second Disguise on the Run. Some technical wizards even master prosthetics to drastically change their appearance. Intrigued? We investigated the secrets of disguise so you too can disappear behind enemy lines.
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