Future Now
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Where Science Meets Fashion
If you're in Australia, you'll probably see me down there this month! Sadly, not in person, but you can find me in the latest issue of Frankie which has been voted Australia's best fashion magazine of 2012. I'm incredibly flattered to be included!
I would love to see more fashion magazines feature women science hackers and show how accessible it is to make weird fun things with science. I grew up always loving fashion magazines and plastering them on my walls. I still remember discovering Alexander McQueen and thinking how amazing his creations were and how I'd love to make my own weird things someday. I suppose in being a 'spacehacker', I achieved that in some way (if only I could create a cosmonaut-inspired runway show!). I think it'd be a huge win for a fashion magazine to do an amazing photoshoot showing off biohackers, spacehackers, neurohackers, etc. with crazy contraptions, and then turn around to their readers and say 'you can do this, too!'.
Coming back from Paris a couple weeks ago, I watched the In Vogue: The Editor's Eye documentary on the plane, and one quote from Nicole Kidman was spot on about the impact of fashion magazines: "They give us access to another world. They give us access to dreams." This is what both space exploration and fashion have been to me. I think it's due time that the "science hacker" dream be depicted in fashion and show how anyone now can have access to space exploration and science.
It's in this nebulous area of where dreaming meets accessibility that I am focusing my IFTF Fellow project on. My hope with creating a prototype of a book about spacehacking is that it has the lightweight approach of a magazine combined with the provocative and (sometimes) accessible nature of fashion.
Ariel Waldman is an IFTF 2013 "Future for Good" Fellow. The Future for Good Fellowship Program starts with six fellows joining us for months—from May-August 2013—to create visions and develop actions for our collective good.