Apparently someone had the bright idea to bring lighted fabric to the masses:

A company called Luminex has hit on the idea of weaving fibre-optics into fabric, so the wearer can really light up a room when they enter it.

Luminex’s Cristiano Peruzzi says: “It is a fabric containing, amongst other things, fibre-optics, but there is also a technical side to it.

“The system consists of cabling, and the fibre-optics are lit by high-efficiency LEDs. The system powering it varies according to the function.”

Luminescence is often associated with safety. Following someone, or avoiding them, is obviously much easier when you can clearly see them (unless of course you can’t see at all). Seems like a pretty good idea to me, but the real market will surely be if someone can finally make sense of the need to communicate through our clothes. We wear patterns and colors to express concepts of belonging, or power, happiness, etc. and the ability to control this dynamically opens a whole new world of possibilities.

I ran into this concept a several years ago at a party where some uber-geeks were experimenting with primitive electric clothing. Here is a photo of a guy who was pretty easy to find in the dark. We called him EL (electroluminescent) Man.

Imagine if your ID was a unique light pattern.