The jacket was designed as a fashion piece with cyberpunk as the core influence in Summer 2020, combining a popular 80s style with modern wearable electronics.
An 80s Danier leather jacket was bought from a thrift shop. The jacket featured masculine details, which would match perfectly with a patch purchased from Etsy that had more feminine colours and shapes. The patch featured a snake and constellations, to eventually pair with the wearable electronics to be added next.
Using Adafruit LED Sequins and conductive thread, I sewed the LEDs onto the outside of the jacket, with the ends stitching solderable caps to the inner liner.
To ensure the lighting connections would hold up to repeated wear, wires were used instead of thread to connect the circuit on the inner liner. The LED sequins were set to run on two parallel circuits of 4 LEDs which could glow in alternating patterns.
Using the Adafruit FLORA microcontroller, the lights would be set to glow and fade on a repeating cycle until disabled by the wearer. The copper pads of the LEDs were painted with black nail polish to seal the threads from the elements and match with the jacket colour.