Smart textiles: do they have mainstream appeal?

04 Mar 2010

A raft of R&D is creating smart textiles that sense physiological markers, offer a new aesthetic, power portable devices, or manage communication and entertainment technology. Applications have been found in healthcare and military work, and sportswear firms Adidas and Nike have shown an interest in smart fabrics' potential too.

Can smart textiles ultimately appeal to the mainstream though? And how will they get into the consciousness of the average consumer? +Plastic Electronics spoke to smart textile developers and designers using innovative materials to find out more.

Angel Chang, a New York-based fashion designer who creates smart textile ranges

Sometimes the people who attend smart textile conferences I speak at are really removed from the fashion industry - they work in the technical arena and don't live and breathe fashion, so they don't understand that things need to be completely washable or that designers might want to use a cashmere blend, for instance.

From a fashion perspective, there's a divide between smart textile cultures and the textile manufacturers and mills, which aren't exposed to new materials at the moment.

 

Sandy Black is director of the London College of Fashion's Centre for Fashion Science

We need more integrated designs than simply threading wires through a ski jacket, for instance. It will be more sophisticated things like Eleksen's textile-based sensors that will eventually filter through.

You have to build the aesthetics with the technology to make it acceptable.

 

Despina Papadopoulos is designer at and founder of Studio 5050. Her company is developing a set of standardised modules to make smart textile innovation easier for the fashion world

The question is, how do you combine these two industries that are very different? Fashion applies very quick changes every season, and the electronics industry has longer development cycles.

Lots of people in this area define themselves as hackers, as they have to take existing electronics and make them smart. Why is there no standardisation?

 

Kunigunde Cherenack is working on the TecInTex project, a Swiss initiative to make the basic technology for smart textile

There are so many different ways to make a smart textile that we could ultimately see moving to an industrial fabrication process.

We're not making new, state-of-the-art transistors. We're focusing on weaving textiles and making the textile properties come to the fore.

The two big questions in smart textiles are, can you wash it, and can it supply power?

The crossover of smart textile technologies and fashion will be covered in Vol. 2, Issue 6 of +Plastic Electronics magazine.