Smart Fabrics: The rekindled affair between fashion and technology. This year they are getting together again in a new way. Beyond just wearable tech pieces like smart watches and fitness bracelets, tech can now be embedded into the fabrics you wear.
Last month Wired said, “The largest and fastest growing category is expected to be smart garments, which are predicted to grow from 100,000 units shipped in 2014 to 26 million units shipped in 2016.”
How does it work? The technology is embedded into the garments themselves by shrinking it down.
Smart fabrics aren’t merely an idea, several companies have been working on incorporating them. Ralph Lauren showed theirs off at the US Open Tennis Championships in 2014. The ball boys and girls wore new Ralph Lauren tennis shirts, enabled with technology. The shirts monitored heart rate, breathing and stress. The tennis clothes were available as part of Ralph Lauren’s 2014 Open Collection.
Not only is it applicable to athletic gear, high fashion has locked eyes on it as well. Designer Iris van Herpen used a different approach. The Autumn/Winter 2015 ready-to-wear collection featured the technology. Instead of gathering information, the tech-materials included hand-burnished, translucent meta-weaves of stainless steel and silk.
Even Google is coming around to this new side of wearable tech. Google and Levi have teamed up for Project Jacquard. The project uses conductive yarn, sensor grids and embedded electronics. The fabric will be able to connect with smartphones by captured touch and gesture data.
“Developers will be able to connect existing apps and services to Jacquard-enabled clothes and create new features specifically for the platform. We are also developing custom connectors, electronic components, communication protocols, and an ecosystem of simple applications and cloud services,” states the project.
It doesn’t stop there, Intimacy 2.0 takes smart fabric a step further. The dress designed by Daan Roosegaarde, was made to turn transparent when the wearer is turned on. This approach is somewhere further than just cool tech designs, it goes transparent when your heartbeat quickens.
For those more athletically inclined, you can get behind Sensoria’s smart running collection. The “Smart Running System” is connected between multiple wearable garments (think shirts, sports bras and shoes.) It was debuted last month in Las Vegas with an app and website that tell the runner things like stride length and cardio training with the users heart rate. It can even tell you when to buy a new pair of shoes.
If you want to keep your fabrics straight, and how smart they really are, BBC has a material guide.
Connecting tech to fashion through smart fabrics is being done in so many ways. From high fashion to athletic gear to digital interaction, it’s being incorporated in a big way. This year, look out for smart fabrics, the trend will only grow from here.