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In recent years, fashion and technology have come together to create something amazing called smart fabrics. These are special kinds of clothes that can do more than just look good. They can actually perform tasks like keeping you warm, helping to stay fit, or even charging phone.
Smart fabrics refer to materials whose insides possess tiny gadgets or sensors. This way, sensors can be mounted within the fabric that enables clothing to sense what's happening around and even react accordingly. For instance, there is a jacket which heats up once it gets very cold outside. Others include shirts that can even measure heartbeat.
Passive Smart Fabrics: These only sense changes. For example, a shirt which changes colour with sunlight.
Active Smart Fabrics: These sense and react. For example, a jacket which adjusts its temperature according to the coldness or hotness.
Google's Project Jacquard: A jacket with touch-sensitive threads that allows to control music or calls by swiping sleeve.
Hexoskin Smart Shirts: These shirts monitor heartbeat, breathing, and various other fitness-related details.
Luminex: Glowing fabric comprising tiny lights; it is used to make illuminating clothes that glow in the dark.
Outlast: A fabric that keeps you cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold, originally made for NASA astronauts.
Self-Cleaning Cotton: A fabric that doesn’t get dirty easily because of a special coating.
Health monitoring: Some clothes can check heartbeat or how much a person is exercising. It's great for sports people and also for fitness enthusiasts.
Temperature Control: There are clothes that can keep a person warm in winter and cool in summer. No need to wear extra layers, though!
Self-cleaning: Some clothes can clean themselves; it saves a lot of trouble.
Smart fabrics are still evolving, and future prospects look quite exciting. In fact, people might have clothes that self-heal once torn, clothes that change their shape, and clothes that feel our emotions, but these come at a little cost and with scientists trying to make them as cheap and as eco-friendly as possible.
Smart fabrics are changing the way people think about clothes. They're not only fashionable but also extremely useful. As technology advances, smart fabrics will be an important part of lives, making the future of fashion cool and smart.
