But will they wear it?

The world of the most technologically advanced textile products is populated with incredibly smart and talented scientists, researchers, designers and entrepreneurs. Soon after e-textiles specifically, and smart fabrics in general, appeared on the advanced textiles scene, it became evident that textile people alone were not going to be able to take these innovations where they could presumably go. This would require collaborative work among fiber and fabric experts, materials engineers, electrical engineers, and clothing designers. 

That’s right, clothing designers – essentially people trained to succeed in the world of fashion. (Fashion!) That was quite a revelation to some, but it didn’t take long to realize that these are the folks that are charged with getting people to want to wear certain styles and clothing brands enough to buy them. Chances are their customers’ decisions will initially be influenced by how a garment looks – it’s style, cut, color and fabric. But ultimately a customer is going to buy more of something because of how it feels – the fit, the breathability, the stretch – in short, comfort. 

Why should we expect it to be any different in the world of health and wellness (or medical) wearables? In fact, wouldn’t how a wearable feels be even more important, given the reason for putting it on in the first place? The wearer is uncomfortable – stiff, sore, perhaps in pain, maybe with limited mobility, living with the uncertainty of a breathing or heart issue. In that situation, all anyone wants is to be more comfortable than they are at that moment!

I am making an argument already made in our feature, with surprising and apt examples in another design world, but guided by an aesthetic that would benefit the wearables world, too. In her article, “User acceptance in smart fabric products”, our feature writer, Dr. Marie O’Mahony, reflects on the work of famed Finnish designer Alvar Aalto, a pioneer of “humane modernism,” which prioritizes comfort, among other things, and the use of natural materials. 

It’s not a leap to apply this thinking to wearable technology, especially in clothing. Even so, it took a little thinking on my part to be totally onboard with her approach, but in the larger context, it makes sense. We tend to talk a lot on in this publication about more focused contexts, so zooming out into a more macro perspective can be a good thing, especially given that acceptance and adoption of smart fabric wearables has been rather measured – and they’ve been around in some form now for at least 20 years, and maybe longer, depending on which innovation is chosen as “the first.” 

While it’s true that early iterations seem somewhat crude by today’s standards, with wires threaded through a fabric, and power sources like miniature hockey pucks that rendered any garment “something other than,” the familiarity of wires and power sources surely helped to gain interest. And it all had to start somewhere. As fast as users tired of clumsy battery packs, researchers were hard at work designing smaller, lighter weight and less obtrusive ones. 

Now they’re designing a fabric battery. That’s right, the battery itself is fabric. And that’s just one of the recent developments. Eventually, you’ll could be wearing a smart garment so comfortable that you may forget that, while you’re going about your day, it’s monitoring for heart and breathing could be saving your life.