Oh. Wow. This dress with added spidery goodness is amazing.

The mechanical dress prototype was featured at EU Robotics Week in Prague last year. It’s described (sadly, rather vaguely), as “sensoric, servo controlled, mechanic, microcontroller based.” Which means that, despite its apparent intricacy, if you know your way around a servo motor you could probably do something similar.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories should have the necessary supplies. Programming the “legs” to do some sort of complicated routine might be tough, but having them periodically stretch out and then curl back up should be fairly straightforward. (It’d also be lots of fun to do this as a hat.)

(Hat tip to xJane)