The Science

Our fashion-forward sensory clothing collection is influenced solely by the science of sight in order to support young children's visual and cognitive development.

Science

Between the ages of 0-3 years, a baby's brain produces more than a million neural connections each second. Science has demonstrated that you can actually improve your little one's brain function and encourage mental development by surrounding them with strong visual stimuli.

In other words, babies are better at learning new things if they have been exposed to visual stimulation from an early age due to being able to make more neural connections.

The patterns of our clothes and accessories draw on this science in order to trigger these connections by age and stage and support your infant's ongoing cognitive, social and physical development.

“Strong age-appropriate visual signals result in greater brain growth and faster visual development. This in turn has the effect of boosting a child’s attention span and inquisitiveness, whilst simultaneously improving memory and neural development.”

– Dr. Rachel Smith, GP and Mother

The Science of Sight

Stage 1:

Children are not born seeing the world as we see it. At birth, a newborn’s retina is still not fully developed, and until around 4-5 months babies see predominantly in shades of black and white. In the first few months, a newborn’s vision is blurry and they see better peripherally; you will often see them going cross-eyed as they practise coordinating their central vision. Very high contrast patterns in black and white are the best way of stimulating small eyes and helping little brains make sense of colour signals.

Stage 2:

As vision matures and critical eye-brain connections strengthen, specific colours start to become visible. However, these remain limited at first and are confined to very specific, bold, high contrast tones: red and green start to become visible at around 3 months, with yellow and blue following at 4-5 months. It is essential that growing babies are exposed to strong colours and shapes in order to make sense of them; pastels and washed out tones cannot be detected until a lot later.

Stage 3:

By the time a baby is a toddler they will see the world in glorious technicolour – and be starting to appreciate subtler shades and more complex colour combinations. Their colour recognition will start to feed into other aspects of their development, including their ability to categorise, sort, compare and communicate effectively.

“As adults, colour helps us to create an aesthetic and project an image. For children, colour is a building block to learning in all areas of their life: visual, social, cognitive and physical. Exposing young children to appropriate colours and patterns is one of the most important developmental exercises a parent can undertake.” – Dr. Rachel Smith, GP and Mother

Colour Their World

Wilde Iris’ clothing collection – or wonder-wear, as we like to call it – is scientifically designed to support young children’s visual and cognitive development. Our progressive designs mirror the developmental stages of sight, with the shapes, scale and colours of our patterns advancing in line with the age and stage of the child. Starting with black and white for newborns and progressing all the way through to technicolour for toddlers, we have put infant vision front and centre in a collection designed to fixate and fascinate the smallest eyes (whilst simultaneously appealing to style conscious parents).