Smart Fashion
18
10 มกราคม 2014
Nothing to wear but a suit that’s so last season? Or a top that adds five pounds? Just when you thought the fashion industry had a monopoly on making you feel uncomfortable in an outfit, think again. Things are about to get worse – technically speaking, that is.
As wearable technologies gain momentum, the definition of a ‘smart dresser’ takes on an entirely new meaning. ‘So last season’ suddenly becomes ‘so last version’.
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A very smart smart watch
Back in 2004, Ian Pearson, futurologist at BT, envisioned a world where we would no longer carry around a mobile phone. Instead, our phones would be printed on our wrists. The gadgets bulking up our pockets and cluttering up our bags would disappear, finding their place instead in the actual textile of the bag. And all around us we would find inanimate objects capable of reacting intelligently to our every move. Pearson also gave his vision a time frame: 2020. So, with only six years to go, how are things shaping up?
To date, our wrists are still ink free, though wrist real estate is fast becoming an extremely valuable space on the body. Smart watches – doing everything a smartphone does – are expected to give tablets a run for their money this year, with sales expected to jump from $500,000 in 2013 to $5 million by the end of the year.
The fitness industry is also planning to make 2014 a bumper year for the wrist, with fitness trackers monitoring and storing stats on everything from blood pressure to calories to sleep patterns. Kicking things off to a roaring start was last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas; in response to the surge in technology in the field, the show's organizers increased the space dedicated to digital fitness devices by 30 percent.
Taking up considerably more body retail space are nanotech textiles. ‘Smart fabrics’ are gaining market share as amateur sports enthusiasts reach for high-tech clothing to improve their performance – or at least, their smell. Nanotech-engineered running kits (combined with a pair of non-odor socks) quickly wick away sweat, leaving wearers out of breath – but comfortably fresh, dry and smell-free.
Which leaves us with the high end space – the face. And who better to get that covered than Google. With its launch of Glass last year, Google turned spectacles into a spectacle – albeit a state-of-the-art one. Using voice commands, the wearer can surf the web, make calls, take pictures, record videos, take and receive messages, share what he/she is seeing via live stream, and much more. The smart eyewear will be available to the general public by the middle of 2014 with early adopters expected to jump on the Glass bandwagon immediately. Annual unit sales of Glass are expected to climb to twenty-one million units per year by 2018.
So, what will you be wearing next fall? Are you going for smart? Or just smart?