I love it when technology appears in areas where you don’t normally see it, such as the fashion industry. My fashion sense is truly equivalent to nonsense, but 22-year-old designer Diana Eng successfully blends fashion with math, science, and technology: “Geek designer wears tech well.”

According to this News.com article, “Her portfolio features, among other tech-influenced designs, garments designed using biomimetics, the science of applying the laws of nature to technology; a hoodie with a wireless heart monitor and an embedded camera that snaps pictures as a wearer’s heart rate increases; and the gown, fitted with a hacked hand vacuum and a series of valves, that inflates and deflates according to the desired silhouette.” 

Eng wants geeks to embrace fashion as an outlet for self-expression, to make “the fashion-minded more interested in technology and the fractal-minded more interested in fashion.” However, Eng’s tech-inspired garments are currently only prototypes. The challenge that she and other designers face is creating items that both look good and feel comfortable.

Another passion of Eng’s is turning girls on to gadgets, since gadget creators don’t seem to be aware of girls’ needs. “I think they’re trying to be, but their solution seems to be just making things pink. There’s the pink Razr and the pink iPod…that doesn’t necessarily make it more girl-friendly.”