Fabricating The Future

Forget smart watches and augmented reality glasses, the clothes that you wear are the wearables of the future

- Arnab Mukherjee

The world of fashion knows what we want to wear, often even before we do. Be it the trending hemlines or the latest accessories, designers around the world predict and often create the future when it comes to clothing preferences. And of late, one thing that has been picked up by a lot of such visionary designers is smart fabrics. The connotation ‘smart’ here isn’t just the same as it would be for a smartwatch or a smartTV, but also something more that has been around for a while, especially in the world of sports. But in both cases, they are turning the old adage of ‘you are what you wear’ on its head.

Performance Fabrics

For most of history, clothing has been a means of preserving one’s modesty and hygiene along with projecting one’s individuality. But in recent times, that has been changing drastically. Fabric has been developed in the last decade that is specifically engineered to enhance the performance of athletes due to various traits of such fabrics. Some of these traits are achieved quite easily. Take seamless garments as an example. Something that we take for granted, the simple modification of removing seams from sportswear makes them much more adaptable to the physique of athletes.

Taking this a step further, a number of sportswear brands use special blends for their fabric which grants them additional capabilities. Luon from Lululemon is used in their range of trousers and sportswear as the special yarn used in it creates capillary action that draws sweat away from the body. There are multiple other brands that are doing this too. Along with this, compression clothing is also used by a lot of athletes to prevent muscle fatigue and improve blood circulation while reducing muscle recovery time.