iO-robe: A Short Fashion Forward Fiction.

Intelligent Optic Robing, iO-robe, or just iO - solved so many sartorial conundrums regarding travel, parties, fitting in... . A bit of programming, then - the magic transformation. A digital fairy godmother. It came to mean the birth of ideas, the generation of life itself... iO... a small cursive letter i encircled / enrobed by a fat, round O.

You know, in the 60s - there was Mars and the paper dresses. Mars - the company, not the planet... and the paper dress was just another way to express freedom and being "with it" - fashionably and sexually. 

The digital dress was of the same ilk - another way to be "with it"... hip, chic, cutting edge - you name it - always the same thing, but a different name.

The Techie-Chics and the Techie-Geeks dreamed the entire scene. T-Chics wanted the style, T-Geeks wanted the notoriety... the challenge.

To the middlemen it was a surprise... no need for malls, no sweat shops, no child labor, no fighting for parking spaces - everything changed. Was it better? It was different.

Of course, there was the buffout... of 2020. Like a blackout or brownout - all to do with power / electricity, but so many people were left standing around with so few little wires and buttons dangling - it wasn't that big an embarrassment.

That outage though - created in the modest among us - a momentary return to the paper dress - which made for a better canvas, a smoother silhouette... like the vast screens at the retro drive-in cinemas.  

Then there was, once again, the move to fabric... aside from the digital gadgetry - that's all anyone needed - just a few solid-color dresses or coveralls of fabric - depending upon the "in" feel... soft, crisp, silky, plush, crackly... upon which the iO (robe or suit) was projected.

Eventually, digitally enhanced optics - DEO - also eliminated even plastic surgery - with all appearances hiding the possibility of illusion or facade.

Anymore, what was real?

If you like this story, let me know - with some comments.  Will this be the path of fashion in the future... who can say, but imagining the scenario produced the fiction you just read.  There's another quick fashion-y time travel fiction here.