A more fashionable spin on the solar-powered bag

[gallery]There are a lot of products out there that attach solar panel cells to the outside of a bag to generate power for your devices. But up until now, they have been mostly messenger bags and backpacks. DIFFUS is changing that by offering a more fashionable spin on the solar-powered hand bag. And what I really love about this product is that the designer carefully considered the implementation of the technology, which helps to inform the aesthetics of the design:

"Instead of placing a single flexible thin film solar module onto the side of a bag, the designers of the DIFFUS Solar Handbag have distributed 100 smaller monocrystalline silicon solar cells over the surface of the bag to resemble oversized sequins. The surface of the bag is also embroidered with a combination of normal embroidery and conductive embroidery that transfers the energy harvested by the "solar sequins" to a lithium-ion battery hidden away within a small compartment."

Continue reading on Gizmag. Photos from Gizmag.

A dress that doubles as an eco-warning system

[gallery] Diffus founders Hanne-Louise Johannesen and Michel Guglielmi have designed and created this gorgeous dress that doubles as an eco-warning system. In collaboration with the design company and fashion designer Tine M. Jensen, embroiderer Forster Rohner and IT consultancy The Alexandar Institute, the dress titled Climate Dress includes embedded sensors that measures carbon dioxide in the air. 104 LEDs are sprinkled throughout the top of the garment and surrounded by embroidery. Light brightens and dims in a subtle "breathing" pattern to reflect how much pollution is in the air.

"The Climate Dress is made of conductive embroidery, over a hundred tiny LED lights inserted into the embroidey, a CO2 sensor and an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor. The LEDs visualize the level of CO2 in the nearby surroundings and are powered through the embroidery..." continue reading on diffus.dk.

Main image from this month's (April 2010) Surface Magazine. Other images from diffus.dk.