Value you your personal space? This could be the dress for you.

Hong Kong-based designer Kathleen McDermott has designed a frock that features built-in proximity sensors and plastic armature that makes it expand outwards when anyone comes too close to the wearer.

The dress then retracts automatically when it senses that its wearer has been given enough room.

Its umbrella-inspired design and passive aggressive expansion might not win you any friends on the rush hour commute, but transport irritants such as sharp-edged bags, jostling elbows and flapping newspapers will become problems of the past.

On her website McDermott describes the dress as 'Urban Armour' to help women "assert control over their personal/public space."

The umbrella dress: Coming soon to a train near you