Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket: your new smart jacket

You can now buy the smartest jacket on the market created from the collaboration between Levi’s and Google Jacquard. This and other innovative products are making and will make our clothes smarter!
Try to imagine a fabric that can interact with the outside world and incorporates touch technologies just like your cellphone screeen. Imagine that this kind of potential is applicable to any garment and any surface, even those of your furniture, for example. Now, imagine that the fabrics and the surfaces do not lose anything in terms of comfort, design and convenience to these new smart functions.

The dream is not over: you can do it all at an affordable cost and producing it with the standard industrial frames that we already use today for the realization of any garment. Nothing is easier if you use special yarns that incorporate the ability to act as a conductor by mixing with normal materials such as cotton, silk or polyester. Yarns remain resistant and can be woven like any other material from ordinary industrial machinery. All this is connected to microscopic sensors and circuits not bigger than a button that allows you to connect to APP on your smartphone or other devices and interact with the outside world as never done before by controlling a wide range of functions that connect the user to online services, applications or phone features.

Starting today it is no longer a dream or an idea, but a reality, thanks to the collaboration between Levi’s and Project Jacquard, who are launching the brand new smart jacket of our dreams. It costs $350 and will be on sale for now in 3 selected locations in the United States.

The project is one of those coming from Google special division, named Google ATAP, Advanced Technology and Projects, one its most innovative divisions focused on changing our lives with new technological solutions. On the website they state:

The future is what we choose to make. We make what we believe in. A small band of pirates. Believers. Makers.

In the same division, projects such as Project ARA, linked to the creation of a modular smartphone hardware, Project TANGO, dedicated to robotics and the world of 3D modelling for mapping even closed environments, Project SOLI, centred on creating sensors incredibly powerful and responsive, trying to replicate the sensation of browsing a newspaper, on the touch screen of our smartphones and tablets.

But it’s not just Google that is exploring this world. For example, Francis Bitonti’s design studio worked on shoes and clothes that were completely printed in 3D in innovative materials with the aim of exploring a new way of imagining clothing. There are also many applications in the world of clothing that derive from the advances of biotechnology. To mention one, at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), researchers are designing clothes able to interact with the environment and change shape based on factors such as, for example, temperature. Lining Yao, a researcher at the Tangible Media Group, has created a garment that contains living cells that respond to body temperature and moisture variations to create more ventilation when the body warms up, for example, during a sports activity. Sensors, Health Meters, Walkthroughs and more. Everything can be sewn directly into your clothes and nobody will even notice it.

You could say maybe: “but I like fashionable and beautiful clothes”. Don’t worry, we can also solve this with technology. What about, let’s say, a good pair of sneakers that can change look based on your preferences through an app on your smartphone?

This is possible with existing technologies: for example, imagine the screen of your e-book or your Pebble watch if you have one. The same technology that has existed for decades and is called e-ink, allows you to change the look of your shoes with ShiftWear. Fear that you drain the battery? Well, this technology consumes very little energy and anyway it is not a problem because you can recharge your shoes while you are walking.