ShiftWear’s e-paper shoes can change designs on a whim. If you’re the sort to buy multiple pairs of sneakers just to make sure your footwear is always fashionable, you might soon have a way to save a lot of money. 

Sneakers that have color e-paper displays in their sides. You only need a mobile app to change your look at a moment’s notice and you can even use animations if you’re feeling ostentatious. The shoes are machine-washable, and the e-paper consumes virtually no power if you’re using static imagery there’s even talk of walk-to-charge tech that would save you from ever having to plug in or swap batteries. 

ShiftWear hopes users will create a mobile marketplace of shapeshifting shoe styles. It’s a clever and cool-looking combination of technology and fashion 

New York-based ShiftWear is using its Indiegogo campaign to help finish its sample, so we don’t know for sure if this type of flexible e-paper display could reliably work sandwiched in between layers of synthetic material. We’ve seen some interesting prototypes with flexible e-paper displays before, like the Wove bendable smartwatch, but nothing like this. ShiftWear even acknowledges that “the existing technologies suffer from certain issues and they are working to solve it.” ShiftWear wrote that it can’t disclose any aspect of the shoes’ development, citing trade secrets and competition. 

VIJDAN SAEED,  

Islamabad, April 29.