WearNet

History

2023: Product Announcement

A team of students from St. Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design (SPbGUPTD) has launched a startup to create school uniforms with adapted ethnic elements and the use of augmented reality (AR). The press service announced this on March 7, 2023.

The project is called "Ethno" and is aimed at preserving and promoting the culture of the peoples of Russia. Their product was named WearNet. The concept of using augmented reality is that when the phone hovers over the school uniform, additional virtual design elements and general information about the student are displayed on the gadget screen.

WearNet's first collection focuses on Veps culture

In everyday life, we increasingly meet individual elements of different cultures, and this phenomenon is already becoming widespread. However, these elements are losing their original significance, now the problem of cultural appropriation is especially noticeable. We support the idea of national diversity within one country and respect every nation. Therefore, when creating a startup, it was very important for us to preserve and correctly adapt the heritage of our ancestors for the current generation. The school uniform with ethnic design developed by us introduces young people to folk culture, remaining stylish and modern, "says Nika Savitskaya, a startup leader and student at St. Petersburg State Pedagogical University.

The first collection is dedicated to the culture of the Vepsians - the indigenous peoples of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. It is noted that for the first collection, students studied the embroidery of vepses. The form is developed on the basis of traditional methods of making clothes using natural fabrics and ecomaterials of domestic production that do not cause allergies. All ornamentation was applied to products by hand using stamping techniques. Now students are working on the introduction of AR technology, which will allow displaying virtual design elements of school uniforms and general information about the student on the phone screen.^[1]

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