Clothes That Are Supposed to Do the Impossible

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All these years, we've simply expected our clothing to look cute, get some compliments, and not totally fall apart in the washing machine or at the dry cleaners. It looks like we need to significantly adjust our expectations!

First up is clothing that's actually supposed to melt unsightly flab right off a person's body. Naturally, you'd want to wear this performance-enhancing finery with your toning shoes, for optimal results. As lucrative as that fugly footwear niche has been -- $1 billion in 2010 -- why not add clothes to match? Now, this stuff isn't like those old fashion sauna suits, but it's made from ultra-brainy, constrictive, technical fabrics; the clothing enhances your performance by improving your posture, which means you'll burn slightly more calories during exercise -- and doing the math yourself, improved posture during an hour-long workout means you burn maybe an additional 50 calories. YAWN. We're willing to give the chiro shirt a pass because it looks orthopedic and the science seems sound enough. (But yet, when, at the end of the article the inventor talks about anti-obesity diet clothing and we can't tell if he's being facetious so we think he must be serious, it almost invalidates everything we granted him about the chiro shirt.)

Next up: this dress that looks like it was equally inspired by Rodarte, a nasty mescaline trip, Spider Man, and Tarzan. The inventors call it Herself, and she's coated with cement and **supposedly** sucks up nitrogen oxide and CO. If you believe the claims, this dress reduces the nastiness is its immediate ecosystem by 65%. We wonder how much waste and pollution actually goes into manufacturing and shipping the dress, and then if it all balances out.

But what we want to know is what would happen if you wore the toning tights under the pollution-busting dress?then went to McDonald's?
· What's the Science Behind Toning Clothes? [OC Register]
· Back Pain Leads to New Clothing Line [OC Register]
· This Dress Could Save the Planet [Gizmodo]
· Good Posture Burns More Calories [CalorieLab]