On the one hand, major geek potential.
On the other hand, major walking light-up billboard potential.
Still, soft, flexible LED shirts have got that Ooh, shiny! geel appeal.
I’ve posted before on this board about the LED Bra:
http://news.com.com/2061-10801_3-6050574.html
This site has lots of other illuminated clothing:
Interesting – and hideous all at once. Those seem mostly to be bits of apparel fitted with more traditional LEDs or EL wire. The OP link seems to have Philips designing thin, flexible LEDs woven into (or in between) the textiles themselves, which, while still the height of geek, seems to produce more visually appealing results.
(Well, “visually appealing” in that I can imagine them displaying more than just “PIMP”)
There are a lot of uses for this process besides just geeky clothing. A few off the top of my head:
Imagine having the entire headliner of your car light up when you open the door. Lends a new meaning to the term “dome light”.
How about camping tents that provide their own illumination?
Motorcycle gear that lights up, making it safer to ride at night.
Draperies that provide light at night.
Can you think of any other uses?
This would be great for construction and utility workers, or for safety vests for bikers, pedestrians, dogs, and kids.
Screw painting your chest at the Giants game…!
It’s a fashion statement.
The statement being that you’re a colossal nerd.
I presume the lights are removable. How would one wash these garments otherwise?
I’m guessing these are probably a variant of OLEDs that are printed between sheets of plastic or somesuch. I imagine they can’t be handled quite as rough as your average $2 head shop tee, but they are probably washable in some manner, even if it might be a cold-wash and drip-dry scenario. Electrical components would be sealed, and the battery compartment is probably waterproof.
Pure specilation, but based on some common sense in any event.
Military. Active Camo.
The rave kids will go nuts over this stuff. Now they have both hands free to pop E.
“…suspect is running eastbound on Western Avenue wearing jeans and a white shirt. Correction, red shirt. Errr…blue sh…no, wait, orange shirt.”
Is light-emitting camo really that useful? Maybe if you’re trying to remain hidden on the Vegas strip…
When it can produce an image that is identical to your surroundings, absolutely! “Light-emitting” isn’t much different than “light reflecting”. Trees, grass and everything else are light reflecting. Wear a uniform that is emitting the exact same thing that the shit behind you should have been reflecting (if you weren’t blocking it) and you have flawless camo. To the observer, it’s as if you were not even there.
Sure, writing now those shirts are just displaying stupid bright, solid, primary colors. How long before they can produce an actual image? Then an image in HD resolution even. Those shirts have proved a concept: That flexible cloth-like (is it cloth?) material can display an image. That’s the cats tits right there!!
I doubt the light emitting technology itself is cloth. Whatever it is has to be able to conduct electricity to specific grid coordinates to illuminate the segments (pixels) to the required colour, so my money’s on variants of technologies that already exists: either thin film transistor arrays and liquid crystal in a soft, flexible, sealed insert between two layers of fabric, or a similar flexible OLED array.
On further consideration, it would almost have to be OLED or similar. LCD (and plasma for that matter) requires backlighting, and a shirt with a big ol’ diffuser plate isn’t going to be anyone’s definition of soft or flexible.
I’m not quite sure I follow this. If an observer is shining a flashlight directly on the lighted camo, then, sure, it would seem to make sense. But what happens when that observer is shining his light in a different direction, then suddenly sees a tree glowing from fifty yards away?
As for the OP, that clothing looks ridiculous - and I say that as a nerd with absolutely no fashion sense and an inexplicable fascination for messing around with LEDs (I have about a thousand ultrabrights hanging around my house). 
Well, the flashing, whirling, pulsating shirt-bobs look rediculous – like a walking Winamp visualisation. But if you could program your own imagery or scrolly text or whatever, it’d look right at home on the Think Geek main page.
Imagine the terror that my raging hordes could instill in their foes with the likes of these! Imagine a thousand men with flames blazing upon their chests, shouting battle cries and beating weapons together! I shall have to aquire many of these devces.
Reg, I’m sorry to tell you that I’m sure someone will reprogram them with happy bunny faces.