Loungewear and sports apparel have become the new haute couture in recent years, as luxury culture embraces health and fitness. Everyone from fitness-focused celebrities to corporate heads can be seen out on the town sporting the latest designer duds. High fashion designers have created new lines of casual wear intended to combine fashion and utility. And in the world of high tech gadgets, fitness trackers have dominated the market.
Now, smart clothing combines aesthetics with technology to present the wearable equivalent of a bespoke personal trainer.
In this article we will explore the astounding new technologies in smart clothing that respond exclusively to your body and environment, revealing some of the most innovative new brands.
Communicate On-The-Go
In the field of smart clothing, creative approaches to making life run just that much more smoothly are key. The combination of style and tech has led to some fruitful collaborations. Take, for instance, our favorite classic everyday denim brand, Levis. Levis has recently teamed up with Google to produce the Commuter x Jacquard denim jacket. The jacket, designed for busy commuters and people on the go, uses an embedded “Jacquard thread” developed by Google, a type of smart thread that connects to the “Jacquard snap tag” attached to the sleeve.
The snap tag connects to your phone via Bluetooth, so as long as you are traveling through a zone with strong internet connection, you will be connected with ease. Once your jacket is hooked up to the related app on your phone, you will be able to choose music, control audio levels, screen phone calls, and activate navigation systems. The jacket will even inform you if you have accidentally left your phone behind. The jacket is ideal for cyclists, providing another reason to choose an environmentally friendly commute.
For business men on the move, Samsung’s NFC Smart Suit might be just the right fit. Using embedded technology, the smart suit will allow you to exchange digital business cards, unlock your phone, and re-set your devices to office or drive mode. It’s ideal for days packed full of meetings, deals, and networking.
Up Your Fitness Game
There is an amazing range of smart clothing being released that focuses on optimizing your fitness and physical health. Embedded sensors in workout clothes, like the Ambiotex smart shirt, sync with phone apps through Bluetooth as they track your biometrics.
The Ambiotex shirt is multipurpose; designed for fitness junkies to utilize in the gym or out on a run, it will reveal your fitness and stress levels, heart rate variability, and anaerobic threshold, granting you personal access to in-depth data on your fitness regimen. By tracking the data over time, you can chart your progress towards short or long-term fitness goals, and even share the information with personal trainers and healthcare specialists, allowing you to customize your life.
Training clothing created by Athos uses sophisticated medical technology to help you track your muscle effort, breathing, and heart rate. Through micro-EMG sensors, the workout clothes can determine which muscles you are using, and send the data to your phone through Bluetooth.
For Yogis, several companies are utilizing smart clothing technology to help you perfect your posture and guide you towards a more deeply focused physical mindfulness. Nadi X has released a line of yoga pants that use gentle vibrations, what they call “haptic feedback”, to show you where you need to adjust your posture.
Pivot Yoga features an onscreen virtual classroom where your body appears as an avatar, so that you can watch and adjust your poses as you stretch into them. The accompanying app includes a virtual instructor and guided sequence to help you find your yoga bliss.
Stay Cool in the Sun
With summertime fast approaching, we will soon be entering the season of lounging by swimming pools and tanning at the beach. But with greater sun exposure comes greater risk of skin damage.
French company Spinali Design has created a line of swimsuits equipped with waterproof UV sensors that will measure your UV levels and alert you when they are too high, giving you a helpful reminder to apply more sunscreen or seek out the shade. And their stylish Neviano bikinis mean you don’t have to substitute health for style. And you can control the evenness of your tan.
When the sun comes out, so do the shades. Last year Snapchats released the third version of their Snapchat Spectacles, featuring enhanced AR capabilities that map the depth of field of the real world around you as you engage with immersive augmented reality experiences. These shades allow you to snap videos and photos as you wear them, then easily post them to Snapchat, taking holiday photo envy to a whole new level.
Integrated World
As technology develops, designers will continue to release astounding new approaches to smart clothing. How far can we go in optimizing our lives for best health, comfort, physical fitness, and luxury? Only time will tell. For now, these current innovations continue to wow with their creative approaches to maximizing fitness goals and communication. The hybrid of technology and fashion is the way forward, and we are excited. The future, it seems, is now.
