Smartwatches aren’t the only bit of fashion that’s going high tech: From workout gear to evening wear, from t-shirts and tank tops to handbags and hats, designers are finally getting the word. Tech and fashion needn’t be exclusive things.
“The technology has evolved to a point where it can now be synthesized with clothing. It wasn’t wearable six months ago in ways that it is today,” explains David Lauren, son of fashion icon Ralph Lauren and vice president at the clothing giant. “The goal now is to merge it into all kinds of clothing. It will be mind-blowing five years from now,” he told the Guardian recently.
Incredible advances in materials and a clear interest from consumers in clothes that do more than simply hide our bodies are leading the design industry — and Digital Trends will be there to help you find the best of the best in this wild new world.
“The goal now is to merge it into all kinds of clothing. It will be mind-blowing five years from now.”
In partnership with Nike, Intel, Google, and Project Runway, Digital Trends is proud to present FashioNXT’s second annual Wearable Technology Fashion Competition. The design that wins this competition — and ultimately breaks through in an increasingly crowded space — will at last bring fashion, style, and elegance together in a complete package, making a must-have for the wearable tech world.
Last year’s competition saw a diverse collection of ideas, from beautiful handbags designed to charge smartphones to stylish bracelets to dedicated gadgets for swimmers, runners, and more. The winning entry was dubbed “The Killers Suit,” by 20-year-old Pratt industrial design student Dillon Chen.
His design responds to the sound of the band and its fans, using microphones to detect sound level and quality, then emitting lights that change and pulse in response. His garment would be made of OLEDs and controlled by an Arduino microcontroller. Chen, a fan of the band he named the entry after, said he was inspired after a recent concert.
“I thought about the concerts I’ve been to. I’m a big fan of The Killers,” Chen told me last year. “I saw them last year at the Barclays Center and they were so great — I just thought, what would Brandon Flowers wear on stage? What would bring a new dimension to the music or live experience?”
Designs we’ve seen in the last year and a half have ranged from simple elegance such as the Belabeat Leaf to the nifty-I-guess (I’m looking at you, Intel MICA) to the downright ugly. But don’t take my word for it.
“So much of what we’re seeing is super meh,” said Third Wave Fashion founder and technologist Liza Kindred at a South by Southwest talk earlier this year. “One of the things we’re seeing is awful rubber bracelets and are really in our junk drawers. One of the other tropes I see is ‘slap a screen on it.’ I’ve seen screens on hats, belts, wrists.”
Think you can do better? So do I.
So send your latest idea to the contest, which is accepting submissions through September 1. Submissions must include a 200-word description and conceptual drawings or sketches — and feel free to dazzle us with one-minute video of your inspiration. Winning devices will be judged by an all-star panel during Fashion Week in Portland:
The winner will receive $500 in cash, a free exhibit at the 2016 FashioNXT show, and unending praise and thank yous from long-suffering consumers around the globe. Don’t delay — sign up today!
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.