Fashion

While junior Texas state senator Wendy Davis got thrust into the national spotlight this week for her starring role in an anti-abortion-bill filibuster, her tennis shoes are enjoying their own run with fame on Amazon reviews.

"Best damn shoe for being on your feet for 13 hours. Also the best shoe to kick Governor Rick Perry's ass!" reads one of a growing number of Amazon reviews of the Mizuno's Wave Rider 16 running shoes the Democratic lawmaker made famous overnight.

Reads another: "I am so glad that I have a choice about what shoes to buy! Imagine if some legislator tried to tell me what type of shoes worked best for me or what type of shoes were available to me... that is so un-American!" … Read more

It sounds like the start of a joke: "A group of MIT people walk into a sock factory..." But the punch line is a pair of socks that have been so thoroughly engineered, they make tube socks look like something a triceratops would have worn back in the Cretaceous Period.

MIT startup Ministry of Supply has turned its plentiful resource of engineering and high-tech minds to the problem of dress socks. The result is the Atlas performance dress socks Kickstarter project, which has already more than doubled its $30,000 funding goal. There is good reason for this outpouring of sock support.… Read more

The United States had 53 shark attacks in 2012, according to a University of Florida report. Many people find sharks both fearful and fascinating, but their presence in the water doesn't deter surfers and swimmers from jumping into the ocean waves.

Sometimes, people look like prey to sharks. One company is taking an unusual approach to preventing shark attacks with the creation of a shark-repellant rash guard. The form-fitting top does a lot of the usual rash guard things, like offer UV protection and wick moisture. What's different is the design on it.… Read more

Recon Instruments, which debuted its wirelessly connected eyewear with a heads-up display at Google I/O last month, is starting to take preorders for the gadgets.

Consumers can place orders now for the Recon Jet for $500 at jet.reconinstruments.com. And though the glasses debuted at Google I/O, they have nothing to do with Google Glass, despite some striking similarities.… Read more

Maker and teacher Bill Porter had a very important task ahead of him. He had to impress more than 100 eighth graders at a STEM camp. He had already wowed them with an LED lab coat and an 8-bit tie, but they wanted to know what was next. So Porter invented the Tetris tie, a glowing LED tribute to the classic falling-blocks game.

It took Porter about four hours to get the working prototype up and running. The tie uses 80 LED pixels powered by a DigiSpark microcontroller. It cost about $50 in materials.

Showing ingenuity and the ability to work with parts on hand, Porter fashioned the tie itself from two pieces of card stock and a cheap clip-on tie. The clip-on feature is the nerdy icing on the geeky make-cake. "I plan to revisit the design and embed the strips directly into a fabric tie for long-term use," Porter writes.… Read more

Most dresses are made by fashion designers. It takes a special dress to also require the efforts of a robotic designer. Fashion designer Ying Gao brought in robotics designer Simon Laroche to help create (No)where (Now)here, two dresses that activate when someone looks at them.

The gaze-activated dresses incorporate eye-tracking technology. When the dress detects a person's gaze, it moves and lights up in the dark. The undulating dresses are mesmerizing to look at. The fabric moves like gentle waves, making them look alive, like some strange ocean denizens.… Read more

Congrats to Ron G. of Chittenden, Vt., for winning a SwingTip golf-analysis system in our June 7 giveaway, and to Katie D. of Rockaway, N.J., for winning a package of Kanex travel tech last week. This week's prize would help Katie keep all that new gear safe as she trots the globe.

We're giving away a pair of P^cubed Pick-Pocket Proof Pants, which, as their name suggests, help keep your gadgets and other valuables safe from thieves while you travel.

The pants have a number of high-capacity pockets that both zip and button, with a triple-secure hidden passport/money pocket that provides three possible levels of security between your wallet and the world. Two front pockets accommodate smartphones as large as the giant Samsung Galaxy Note. … Read more

You've just created a combination watch and breathalyzer. You're sitting around, trying to decide what to name it. Aha, you think, let's call it the Intoxicated Watch. That will get the point across.

The Kisai Intoxicated Watch has just made its debut on Tokyoflash, where it's selling for a limited time at a $99 launch price.

The watch description says the negative-space time display is easy to read, no matter how intoxicated you are. In case you're not sure what level of drunk you've achieved, the watch has a built-in breathalyzer. You open the sensor cap, push a button, and blow into it for 5 seconds.… Read more

Foiling facial recognition systems that identify people based on photographs may be as simple as wearing a special set of glasses equipped with near-infrared LEDs powered by a battery pack. The LEDs are arranged around the nose and eyes. The human eye can't pick up the near-infrared, but a camera sees it as bright light, enough to obscure the face and confuse facial recognition software.

Researchers with the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Japan developed the special privacy visor to counteract photographs and facial recognition software that could invade privacy. Details on the glasses were released late last year, but a prototype got a public showing at a recent open house.… Read more