It’s not the first time I’ve come across a smart jacket. Google’s Jacquard is probably the most well-known in the tech world but it’s one of various pieces that cross the bridge between fashion and technology thanks to embedded sensors, Bluetooth and conductive yarns. There’s always an add-on of sorts that turns that type of apparel in a smart one. But Skyscrape is proposing something else: reinventing the wheel, in this case the yarn, to make a temperature-responsive jacket.
San Francisco-based research and product development company Otherlab, now Skyscrape, worked on the new yarn technology for 4 years before spinning it into today’s material. The idea was to make a temperature-responsive fabric as a solution to energy waste.
How to go about that? Well, by creating a fabric capable of providing heat when the temperatures drop and contracting to keep cool when they rise again.
This implied manipulating the temperature, tension and twist of the yarn to come up with one that inflates and deflates as the temperatures change, moving from a flat shape to a wavy one. What Skyscrape obtained was one with a range of 20 to 30 degrees, which the team thinks it’s perfect for when you’re commuting, going from a subway car outside, to walk the rest of the way home.
A 2 in 1, of sorts, that would keep the user comfortable instead of sweaty all day long, no matter how many public transportation modes they change.
Now that the technology exists, Skyscrape hopes to use it to launch a line of clothing based on it, beginning with the jacket. Backed up by the United States Department of Energy, with additional funding from Y Combinator, the startup hopes to be start fabric production in the following months and have the clothes ready by the end of 2020.
The cost of the jacket, la pièce de résistance, is unknown at the moment, but I’d expect it to retail for a price similar to the tech jackets on the market now, so around $400.
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