People lacking any sense of fashion no longer need worry about their scarf clashing with their clothes this winter – researchers have created one that automatically changes colour to suit an outfit.

The colour-shifting garment, dubbed a chameleon shawl, was developed by Akira Wakita and colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.

Interwoven into the scarf material are pixels containing red, blue and green light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so adjusting the brightness of each type of diode turns the scarf a different overall shade.

A small sensor embedded in the garment also enables it to identify the colour of the nearest item of clothing. A microcomputer then selects a suitable colour for the scarf itself to adopt…

(Fear not: very soon, those wily Japanese will find a way, as they do with everything, to fuck it.)