Nowadays, it is widely believed that wearable technologies is the future of fashion as we become increasingly "gadgetized" with ...
Nowadays, it is widely believed that wearable technologies is the future of fashion as we become increasingly "gadgetized" with smart watches and wearable LED lights on our clothes. But not everyone is giving credit to perhaps the forefather of wearable technologies - Gustave Trouvé.
During the so-called Belle Epoque, Paris dazzled locals and foreigners alike with the advent of electric light and flamboyant night scene, there was this bizarre and unusual application of light witnessed by the French during that time - electric jewellery. It was on the same era when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and years before Nikola Tesla envisioned his death ray, there was Trouvé.
Even before we have successfully miniaturized light bulbs, the chicest Parisian parties were already electrified by fashion accessories that lights up. As reported in an 1879 issue of the "Scientific American," 'Among the specialties for which the French are noted there is nothing more curious than electric jewellery.'
It is very interesting to think that someone would have conceptualized such technology when LED, microchip and lithium batteries did not exist at that time. Electricity was just getting started and its future applications were not yet fully understood so that inventors are still discovering new things they can do with it aside from electrocuting poor elephants. An clockmaker by profession, Trouvé has already invented a portable military telegraph, a metal detector, a rechargeable battery, a polyscope (a forerunner of the endoscope), the first electric car and boat, and among other modern marvels. He may have well been the first inventors to have been the first to have miniaturized electrical machines.
He has mastered miniaturization throughout his career and he may have been one of the earliest to use stored energy in his inventions with his so-called ‘Lilliputian battery’ to animate "jewellery, clockwork and other objects d’art." Just like today's AA batteries, it can be stored and hidden from plain sight so that it creates the illusion that these fashion accessories have a life on its own.
Not only that, he also included animations apart from the dazzling light effects on his custom-made jewellery: a skull on top of a tie pin whose jaw would chatter when switched on, a bejewelled butterfly hair accessory with fluttering wings, a brooch that featured dancing ballerinas on a tiny golden stage, glass flower corsages that would light up.
In 1879, Trouvé’s so-called bijoux electriques have made their high society debut at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Metiers at the Hotel Continental in Paris. From 1885 to 1891, it has become so rare and sought after that the prices have cost ten times than the original price.
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| Some of the guests are wearing Trouvé’s charming electric jewels: a death’s head tie-pin; a rabbit drummer tie-pin. Suppose you are carrying one of these jewels below your chin. Whenever someone takes a look at it, you discreetly slip your hand into the pocket of your waistcoat, tip the tiny battery to horizontal and immediately the death’s head rolls its glittering eyes and grinds its teeth. The rabbit starts working like the timpanist at the opera. The key piece, a bird, was a rich, animated set of diamonds, belonging to Princess Pauline de Metternich, the famous Vienna and Paris socialite and close friend of the Empress Eugénie. […] Carrying it in her hair, the princess could at will make the wings of her diamond bird flap. |
By 1884, Trouvé was commissioned by the Folies Bergère to create his luminous accessories for the Le Ballet des Fleurs costumes. During the performance, the audience were mesmerized by the women performers who danced with their multicolored crowns with matching broaches that were represented by different types of flower.
During the same period, he also presented his works with spectacular electric highlight reel for the "Chilpéperic: Grand Music Spectacle" at the Empire Theater in London. In the last act, 50 Amazon women were adorned with helmets, shields, and spears and divided into four corps: the Diamond corps, the Ruby corps, the Emerald Corps, and the Topaz corps.
As they go about their routine, the jewels have started to glitter and their armour, helmet, shield and spear all lit up unexpectedly. And the audience, who never seen like it before, were massively ecstatic and burst out into a enthusiastic applause.
Unfortunately, most of his jewellery collection were destroyed by a fire on the building that also contained his archives in the 1980s. A surviving piece was a skull tie pin that is currently preserved in the Victorian and Albert Museum in London.
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