Closed Loop Smart Athleisure Fashion is an initiative based on previous work of Marina Toeters of by-wire.net and Margreet de Kok of the Holst Centre. A cross-fertilization of ideas, the project has gained attention including being chosen as one of the Top 3 Next Tex Innovations at this year’s Munich Fabric Start. On their decision, organiser of Next Tex Marte Hentschel, who is also the founder of Sourcebook, said, “Together with Munich Fabric Start and FashNerd, we [Sourcebook] thought their work particularly stood out and that it fits perfectly with what we want to communicate at our Next Tex Innovations Showcase.”
The Closed Loop Smart Athleisure Fashion work, which is partly funded by the WEAR Sustain project, has introduced us to smart shirts that have been designed to continuously measure the female wearer’s key vital signals based on Holst Centre’s advanced printed sensor technologies on flexible substrates for textile integration. The laminated sensors are genuinely wearable, comfortable, robust, invisible in use, washable up to 25 cycles, and designed for unobtrusive integration in conventional fashion production. Targeting “fashionably sporty ladies”, the duo also worked with fashion designer Melissa Bonvie (Katoen En Zo) to develop a new collection that embraces forward thinking.
On the closed loop lease and recycle system, the talented twosome share on their website: “Intelligent Fashion, containing technology that can measure your health, and are still sustainable. My shirt keeps track of my heartbeat and respiration. So I can be more effective. I know there is a lot of technology in there, but I don’t feel it. The sensors are seamlessly laminated onto the fabric. It’s very comfortable. It’s beneficial to wear them on a daily basis because my clothes check my well-being and stress level. The lease and recycle system is a closed loop. I don’t have to worry about what to do when the garment has no use for me anymore. The technology will be de-laminated from the shirt and recycled. It sounds like a dream of the future, but it’s right here, and we are wearing it.”
Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.