FASHION AND TECHNOLOGY BIND TOGETHER TO CREATE NEW ERA      

Smart Fabrics and Power Laces are the starting points

We cannot deny the fact that the technological world is obsessed with fashion. The three biggest tech empires namely APPLE, AMAZON, and GOOGLE are trying to build a path into fashion space. Apple is engaged in the fancy smart watch production whereas Amazon owns shopping platform and voice-controlled cameras. Google and Levis working together in conductive fabrics embedded in a smart jacket. Tech companies and Fashion stores are showing mutual interest in this inevitable domain.

Karl Lagerfeld is Chanel’s creative director has expressed his love for tech by experimenting with partially printed 3D pieces. He is the most vivid fashion designer who is also experimenting with runway shows that simulate a rocket launch. There is another flamboyant fashion designer called Zac Posen who created a cognitive dress that lights up and changes colours based on the activities on social media. He sought help from fashion house Marchesa and worked with IBM´S Watson supercomputer to create such an inimitable design.

We could see the rift between the two industries is diminishing gradually. Hi-tech fashion is not too distant future, we could be printing 3D shoes or clothes at home. Instead of searching for the best store we would be buying designs straight from the expertized designers. Your Apple Watch is basically a stone if you don’t have an iPhone paired with it. Scientists have also found a way to print 3D patterns on the textiles that can harvest and store electricity. This is an advancement to the way for developing smart clothes. Researchers from Tsinghua University in China drew patterns, pictures, and lettering onto cloth with a 3D printer equipped and a coaxial needle. These prints possess the ability to transform the movement into energy.¨This a technique that is completely for energy management purpose,¨ said Yingying Zhang, a professor at Tsing Hua University in China.

SMART FABRICS

Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) is the group that carries out the company’s offbeat innovations such as the now-defunct Project Ara. The domain has been rethinking about the very materials clothes are made of. For the past two years, the tech giant has been experimenting with conductive fabrics that can make fashion garments smarter. Google carried out  Project Jacquard in which it created a system for weaving technology. The technology can turn clothes or any other textiles into gesture-controlled surfaces. Google believes their designers and developers who are working hard in order to implement this technology in sensor-laden garments that can be used in everyday life, including jeans, T-shirts, and jackets.

To show Project Jacquard’s potential, Google tied up with Levi’s on a connected Commuter denim jacket that consists of 15 conductive threads on the left sleeve. Each thread is just visible enough for you to know where to touch to trigger certain actions. A Bluetooth cuff pairs the jacket to a smartphone that lets you brush your fingers on the smart fabric to check the time or swipe to play music, etc. Further working on this project Google and Levi’s could make the jacket more interactive.

Levi’s and Google’s Commuter jacket is lined up to hit stores this Autumn. It is the first of many products that tech company hopes to see integrate with Jacquard. “We believe that Jacquard is a raw material that would make computation a part of the language where apparel designers and textile designers and fashion designers could speak and communicate with each other for further progression,” the company reported when it introduced its new tech at its I/O developers conference in 2015. “We want digital to be just the same thing as quality of yarn or colours used.”