What Is The Future Of Fabric? These Smart Textiles Will Blow Your Mind (Collected from FORBES)

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, an adjunct associate professor at Pratt Institute as well as an author and researcher on smart textiles and wearable technologies. With a background in active sportswear design working as Design Director at Fila USA, Champion, and Nike’s Starter Division, she really understands the meaning of function and how clothing is meant to work with our bodies, not just sit on top of them. When we think of clothing, we usually just think of it as something we wear to provide coverage, convey our sense of style and protect us from the environmental elements. But, the future of clothing as we know it is about to change in a big way, and smart textiles are paving the way for this change. My chat with Rebeccah gave me some amazing insight into this industry, and what’s about to come.
So, what exactly are smart textiles? Smart textiles are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value to the wearer. Rebeccah states that “what makes smart fabrics revolutionary is that they have the ability to do many things that traditional fabrics cannot, including communicate, transform, conduct energy and even grow.”
Smart textiles can be broken into two different categories: Aesthetic and Performance Enhancing. Aesthetic examples include everything from fabrics that light up to fabrics that can change color. Some of these fabrics gather energy from the environment by harnessing vibrations, sound or heat, reacting to this input. Then there are performance enhancing smart textiles, which will have a huge impact on the athletic, extreme sports and military industries. There are fabrics that help regulate body temperature, reduce wind resistance and control muscle vibration – all of which help improve athletic performance. Other fabrics have been developed for protective clothing to guard against extreme environmental hazards like radiation and the effects of space travel. The health and beauty industry is also taking advantage of these innovations, which range from drug-releasing medical textiles, to fabric with moisturizer, perfume, and anti-aging properties. Just think of all the possibilities!

Dresses made from photo luminescent thread and embedded eye tracking technology from Ying Gao

Rebeccah also made it very clear that smart textiles and (wearable) technology go hand-in-hand, and that designers approach the design application differently than the tech companies do, which ends up being much more friendly to the end user. Rebeccah mentioned that “successful wearable technology companies will start with the design first, then build the technology around it”, which I think is a very interesting and true insight. Think about a company like Apple AAPL +0.03% – they are all about the design, and look how loyal their customer is.
There are quite a few notable designers and companies that have jumped on the smart textile bandwagon who are doing some pretty amazing and innovative things in this space. Grado Zero Espace is an Italian based company who is doing some amazing things with textile technology and product design. Ying Gao, a fashion designer based in Geneva is creating clothing that combines urban design, architecture and multimedia, and uses sensory technologies to make garments more interactive. CuteCircuit, a London based design duo is taking their smart textiles and technology to the runway, as they showed a collection at New York Fashion Week where the models controlled what their dresses looked like on the runway through their mobile phones. There’s even a company called BioCouture who is focused on bringing living and bio-based materials to fashion, sportswear and luxury brands. In essence, they are literally growing clothes from microorganisms like cellulose, fungi and algae!