The New Girl in Town

The little black dress got a makeover while making history.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017 a new black dress was unveiled at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, according to The Guardian. The Trafford Centre is a large indoor shopping center where researchers got together with a wearable technology company, CuteCircuit, to reveal the first black graphene dress that changes colors.

The new and improved little black dress used graphene to power LED lights that changed colors as it synced with the model’s breathing. The lighter the model would breathe the lights turned from orange to green, and the deeper the model breathed the lights turned  from purple to turquoise.

Graphene was discovered by two scientists, Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, at Manchester University in England in 2004, and went on to win the Nobel prize in physics in 2010 for their discovery, which makes Novoselov, 36, the youngest Nobel winner since 1973.

Graphene is one atom thick and consist of carbon atoms. According to Manchester, graphene is the world’s first 2D material that is light, 200 times stronger than steel, but flexible, thin, and a great conductor and performs as a great barrier.

Francesca Rosella, chief creative director for CuteCircuit tells The Guardian, “Graphene has never been used in the fashion industry before.”

“Being the first to use it was a real honor, allowing us to have a lot of fun creating the stunning little black graphene dress and showcasing graphene’s amazing properties.”

Graphene entering the fashion industry is new, exciting, and might be what the future of clothing apparel looks like.

Richard Paxton, general manager of the Trafford Centre, told The Guardian, “Technology and fashion have come together to create what is the world’s most high-tech dress and could become the blueprint for what our millions of customers will be wearing in the future.”

Graphene might be the future for the fashion industry, but that is not all.

According to The University of Manchester, graphene hopefully will be used in other future technologies that can help improve and change our world such as, water purification technology to help get more clean water in developing countries, energy storage, semi-transparent mobile phones, light weight planes, and more.

The University of Manchester reads, “This is only the start. These are only the first steps. The potential of graphene is limited only by our imagination.”