What is smart clothing?

What is smart clothing?

What is smart clothing? Otherwise known as e-textiles, smart clothing refers to items that have technology embedded into their fabric. There are, it turns out, a wealth of better places to put a sensor than on your wrist. It’s still a developing industry, but smart clothing is the future – and you’re going to want to catch up.

Never has a market boomed quite like fitness wearables. Striking at a time when the health and fitness world was eagerly awaiting a way to fuse a new-found love of wellbeing with technology, and led proudly by market leaders FitBit, fitness watches swamped us quicker than we could say ‘squats’. Fitness watches have come a long way from the bulky products they emerged as, and advancements in fashion have certainly upped their credibility. But wearables no longer only refer to watches and bands, as clever as they may be.

Fitness technology now extends to a much cooler, more covert way of tracking. Dubbed ‘smart clothing’, bras, bottoms and tops can now enhance your workout in more ways than you could imagine. 

We find out about the latest in fitness trackers…

MyZone Sports Bra

The MyZone Sports Bra features an in-built heart-rate monitor that can store up to 16 hours of activity data without you lifting a finger (just a few weights). Boasting 99.4 per cent EKG accuracy, results are not only trustworthy but indicative of how hard you’re working, effortlessly syncing with the MyZone app for easy data translation. Your effort level – based on your heart rate – is displayed on the app via five colour-coding zones: grey, blue, green, yellow and red. The harder you work, the more intense the colour, which consequently earns your MyZone Effort Points (MEPS) – the brand’s own metric. This system makes data simple and, most importantly, meaningful – and you only had to get dressed to get it.

From £49.99 myzone.org

Levi’s x Google Jacquard Jacket

As fitness and fashion continue to merge, Google’s partnership with Levi’s is bridging the athleisure gap even more. The outcome? A jacket that can control your mobile devices with the swipe of a finger. Google’s Jacquard technology embedded into the jacket’s sleeves form touch-sensitive panels which, when pressed or swiped (or whatever hand gesture you’d prefer – the jacket is customisable), send a signal to your mobile device. Change your music, answer calls and access navigation information, to name but a few functions – and, in classic Levi’s style, look pretty suave while you do so.

£TBC, atap.google.com/jacquard

Lumo Run

The Lumo Run Capris and its summer-ready sibling, the Lumo Run Shorts, are seamlessly lined with sensors that can track a wealth of running metrics, including cadence, braking, bounce, ground contact time, pelvic rotation and drop and stride length. Add in the Lumo Run sensor – the clip-on tracker that analyses your running form and offers personalised coaching – and you’re in for some serious data. Don’t believe the hype? Tried and tested, the Lumo Run is based on sports biomechanics research on distance running done at Loughborough University.

From £86.05, lumobodytech.com

Athos

Although currently only available in the US, Athos is undoubtedly making the biggest strides in the smart clothing arena. Offering head-to-toe activewear bursting with tight-fitting sensors that can detect heart rate, breathing rate and even muscle activity thanks to electromyography (EMG), Athos is at the forefront of this ever-growing industry. Alongside its athletically designed compression-fit garments, a small ‘core’ – a 20g gadget that is placed into a pocket on the top of the shorts – is required to deliver the data from the sensors to your smartphone.

liveathos.com

Hexoskin

It’s perhaps not the best looking clothing on the market, but Hexoskin’s Full Kit for women (including shirt and device) is made with Italian textiles that track the user’s heart rate, breathing rate, activity level, step count, cadence and calories. The Hexoskin smart shirt, the base-layer tank top with a built-in bra that boasts integrated sensors, and the Hexoskin device, a Bluetooth recording gadget that slips into a pouch on the shirt, together make light work of measuring, tracking and planning.

$399 (£320.50), hexoskin.com

Now you know you can answer – ‘What is smart clothing?’ Why not put get some  smart clothing  and put it into action with our Fitness Guide?