The future of fashion: dresses that tweet on show at #techstyle in Boston’s MFA

Engineered Reptile Print Dress, 2015, by Sally LaPointe. Polyester-net embroidered with mylar sequins and digitally printed, silk satin underdress. Courtesy Sally LaPointe / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Metallic leather fringe dress by Giles Deacon, 2014. Laser-cut leather and Swarovski crystals. Chris Moore / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

132 5 Dress, 2010, is folded, origami-style according to precise computer calculations. It is part one of a two-piece ensemble by the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, by Reality Lab, an experimental design laboratory headed up by Miyake, and the Miyake Design Studio. Hiroshi Iwasake / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

132 5 Dress, 2010, is folded, origami-style according to precise computer calculations. It is part one of a two-piece ensemble by the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, by Reality Lab, an experimental design laboratory headed up by Miyake, and the Miyake Design Studio. Hiroshi Iwasake / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

132 5 Dress, 2010, is folded, origami-style according to precise computer calculations. It is part one of a two-piece ensemble by the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, by Reality Lab, an experimental design laboratory headed up by Miyake, and the Miyake Design Studio. Hiroshi Iwasake / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Anthozoa Cape and Skirt, Voltage Collection, by Iris van Herpen and Neri Oxman. 3-D-printed by Stratasys in polyurethane rubber and acrylic, with a steel cage, cotton twill inner lining and silk satin lining. Ronald Stoops / Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Molecule shoe, 2015, by Francis Bitonti. Polyester filament, 3-D-printed with a Stratasys Connex printer, using software by Adobe Photoshop. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Wearable technology is beginning to feature more prominently in the lexicon of fashion and textile curators. The latest exhibition to explore this trend, which fuses technology, style and increasingly, commercial sense, is #techstyle, which opened this week at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

“The exhibition really looks at contemporary fashion and the kind of synergy that many designers have with technology today,” says Pamela Parmal, chair and David and Roberta Logie curator of Textile and Fashion Arts at Boston’s MFA, who is one of the show’s curators.

“They are creating not only new clothing but new ways of producing clothing, new ways for people to interact with clothing. It’s a very exciting period ... Many of today’s designers actively seek out collaborations with scientists and engineers to apply new technologies in digital media, sustainability and even biotech to their work. At the same time, scientists and engineers have embraced fashion, pushing the boundaries of manufacturing and design,” she says.

The show features more than 60 items from 33 household fashion names as well as new design talent; from dresses that have been purchased for the museum’s permanent collection to items that have been specially commissioned for the show.

Clothes in the exhibition respond to the environment, to noise and light, as well as the wearer and the spectator. For example, CuteCircuit, an ethereal dress by designers Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, has 10,000 micro-LEDs wired onto its surface and during the show it will publish museum-goers’ tweets.

Other garments and accessories featured leave the 3-D printer ready-to-wear. Many are laser-cut or digitally-printed and have been seen in the catwalk shows of well-known designers such as Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo, who have led the way in fusing fashion and technology.

#techstyle illustrates the ways in which fashion is becoming yet another "active interface" between the wearer and the world, and reveals the potential for what we wear to perform for us. One dress on display is covered in dressmaking pins that move independently of the wearer in an organic response to noise. There's also a dramatic leather cape with a feathered surface (The Bird, pictured above) that changes through a spectrum of colours in response to light, heat and wind.

Finally, the production section of #techstyle shows how contemporary designers are harnessing the latest innovations in manufacturing to bring their extraordinarily inventive ideas to life.

• #techstyle is being shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston until July 10. For more information, visit www.mfa.org.

Clare Dight is the editor of The Review.