The intersection of high tech and high fashion is well getting closer, if you believe what you could see at the September 2015 London Fashion Show. In fact, some in the fashion industry are predicting that within 10 years—possibly as few as 5—we’ll be wearing our phones and cameras on our sleeves as well as our hearts. Or, more accurately, in our sleeves, since the devices will be part of the fabric of our clothing.
London is in the vanguard of the smart clothes movement, where people at CuteCircuit have been merging fabric and technology for 10 years, with an increasingly large celebrity fan base. CuteCircuit is currently in discussions with a big name design house they’re not quite ready to talk about.
One big fashion name has already put technology to work in fashion. Ralph Lauren has the Polotech™ shirt ($295), which uses silver fibers in the shirt to monitor biometric stats, such as heart rate, breathing, activity level, and calories burned. The information is streamed to the Polotech app on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 8 or higher. So first you need that new iPhone and then you need to avoid contact sports and bodies of water—no wrestling, football, or water polo; just a gentlemanly came of tennis or racketball.
And you need a y chromosome. The shirt is available only for adult males. And judging from the website, really built adult males.