Smart Textiles: Where Technology meets Apparel
“Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.” — Vivienne Westwood
What is Fashion?
If you ask me, Fashion is like eating but there is a trick to it. You should not stick to the same menu. There are different and various styles to every fashion, which gets me to ask whether you people pondered about glowing dresses, called led dresses, and wondered how that works? Have you ever got curious about how vast the clothing technology is escalating?
CURIOUS??
Then read further to ease your curiosity.
We all might’ve come across the usage of dresses with glowing lights that change colors as you walk, LED strips induced clothes, accessories that play music in sync to our heartbeat, and so on. worn by models during fashion shows and walks. Although here they are used mostly for amusement and entertainment, technology-embedded clothing is not limited just for the sake of show-off. There are shockingly amazing utilities served by it.
From textiles with embedded temperature sensors, special military fabrics to athleisure predicting the body vitals and nanotech in textiles there is a wide range of applications to explore. They provide the luxury of making living a little easier and more comfortable.
Smart Textiles:
This is the first thing that comes into mind when we think of technology in clothing. Smart textiles are in a huge uproar and of greater demand in the future. Also known as e-textiles, smart garments and functional fabrics usually contain an electronic component embedded in them. It may be a sensor, a battery, or an LED. Beyond the typical function of a fabric, smart textiles are known to benefit the user. They respond and adapt to their environment. Their applications include healthcare, safety, sports, military, and lifestyle monitoring.
Sportswear:
Sportswear is one of the rapidly growing sectors of the textile industry. Scrupulous practice and intensive training help athletes break records and achieve their goals. Putting aside the strenuous hard work, functional and innovative sportswear help by giving a competitive edge to sportspersons, bringing them one step closer to their goal of winning. The sportswear industry contends to design technologically advanced and innovative clothing apparel to stay upfront in the race.
Moisture Wicking Fabric:
Sportspersons sweat a lot during games, requiring them to change a lot. A profound technique is used to keep this problem at bay, which absorbs moisture and keeps sweat in check.
It uses special cooling polymers visible on the fabric in the form of tiny blue rings. The moment these rings come in contact with sweat or moisture, they instantly swell up, causing an extensive cooling sensation. This groundbreaking technology will be used to make performance layers, sleeves, headwear, and shirts for men and women.
Fabrics that Monitor Athletic Actions:
Sometimes sportspersons need to track their movements to get an analysis of their gameplay. Smartwatches and other devices serve this purpose only to an extent. But a unique technology that adopts the use of intelligent textiles to help players monitor their activities? That’s new. This revolutionary technology has been implemented in the sportswear of football players allowing the coach to monitor each movement, heartbeat, and make comparisons.
A mini data cell is placed in a protective pocket, in the back of a sportsperson’s base layer garment. Along with it, a series of electrodes are woven into the fabric along with sensors.
The cell transmits wireless signals and information regarding the performances of a player to a distant computer.
Health Care and Medicine:
A company called, Edema ApS is developing a washable and reusable stocking that is used to measure and monitor changes in leg volume with patients suffering from edema which is a case of fluid accumulation or swelling in the lower limbs. While it’s not fully available for patients yet, the stocking is being prepared for clinical trials and validation. Future uses of the stocking could be to monitor congestive heart failure or preeclampsia, which happens during pregnancy and involves hypertension, edema, and protein in the urine.
Another firm, Clothing+, manufactures textile-integrated sensors that meet the necessary FDA requirements for medical-grade solutions. One of the main ideas for the e-textile includes a bioimpedance vest, which measures water accumulation in the lungs to indicate heart conditions. This vest can be worn at home for condition analysis before hospitalization, saving time and money.
The University of Bristol is working on soft robotic clothing that can help old and vulnerable people from falling by supporting them as they walk and giving others bionic strength to switch between sitting and standing positions or climb stairs. Smart clothing integrates nanoscience, 3D fabrication, electrical stimulation, and full-body monitoring technologies. Researchers believe this technology can be the answer to potentially freeing wheelchair-dependent people from having to stick to those devices.
Charging Clothes
No, these are not the clothes that can be charged but those that can be used to charge other devices. What if you are outside in an important event and your phone battery dies with no other means to charge it up? That’s when these clothes come in handy. Pauline van Dongen, a Dutch fashion designer, worked with experts to develop a prototype that includes a dress and a coat with flexible solar panels.
Both the coat and dress together consist of more than 120 rigid plus flexible solar cells. This jacket exposed to the sun for an hour has the capacity to store enough energy to charge a typical smartphone by about 50 percent. When the person is outside in the sun, the jacket can be worn out for the cells to be charged or can be folded inside when not required. As crazy as it sounds, this is how chic fashion meets tech!
Google and Levi’s Partnership:
The tech giant Google and popular denim company Levi Strauss have been working on developing a smart denim jacket to meet future needs. It was envisioned to build this jacket using Google’s Project Jacquard smart technology which has smart fabric in its sleeves capable of built-in touch controls. This was successfully commercialized in 2019 in Levi’s jackets.
The jacket uses Bluetooth and conductive wire to communicate with a partner smartphone Jacquard app. Users can change their music selections and perform other commands with programmable touches of the web.
The Cost Factor
Like there are challenges in any field, wearable clothing has its complications too. The main one being the economic element and the acceptance of the public that comes with it. Today’s innovation can be outdated by tomorrow and yet is marketed with a hefty price tag.
Another problem is that if there occurs any fault, it’s not very easy to get it rectified as these involve high technology and not all can be able to do it. So, repair costs are higher. Nevertheless, we should keep it in our mind that while a common person may not be interested to purchase a high-tech embedded item, a professional belonging to that domain or a tech-savvy who has a keen interest in these sorts of things would definitely pay a whopping amount to get his hands on it. Either way, the innovation, and its exuberance deserve the hype and can certainly be of more help for future generations.
To learn further and to dig deep about fashion, textiles, and so on, you can refer to the reference links stated below.
References:
• https://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/6998/new-technologies-insportswear
• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236274
• https://www.cio.com/article/2433793/wearing-tech--where-fashion-meetstechnology.html
• https://www.mouser.com/applications/healthcare-may-reside-in-smartclothing/
Well, well, we have come to the end of a little tour around clothing technology.
Now, stay back and wait for more awesome blogs till then have fun…..
