
check out what some forecasters from the 1930’s predicted women would wear in 2000. (video below) [thanks, ambidextrous]
Check out this functional t-shirt which displays the strength of wifi signals. $29.95 from Think Geek.


Scientists and engineers and a Cornell design student are developing clothing that has the potential to eliminate viruses before giving you a cold, eats smog, so you can breath cleaner air, and never have to be washed. Microscopic nanoparticles coating the garments can actively eliminate viruses and bacteria.

Intellifit has developed a body scanning booth, which measures 200 body measurements in 10 seconds. The Intellifit website, in partnership with several retailers, including Nordstrom, Gap and Levi’s, will compare your measurements with clothing dimensions for a guaranteed fit. Intellifit body scanning is free. There are only a handful of booth locations, but the Company is expanding. Click here for some videos.
Check out this video of a Nike Pro advertisement, a custom box with a Nike Pro t-shirt inside that fills with smoke, clears, and then fills with smoke again, which represents the the key benefit of Nike Pro apparel: that it whisks aways sweat. Cool!

Having managed the technology solution for jeans fit clinics at Gap, I know firsthand the importance of fit to an apparel consumer. An emerging niche of online companies aim to help consumers find perfect fitting apparel. One company, venture-backed Zafu.com, has analyzed the fit of hundreds of jeans from diverse brands on thousands of women, and when a consumer plugs in her particular measurements, and style and size preferences, the site predicts, with an alleged 94% accuracy, a perfect fit. The site links to third-party sites that carry the jeans.
[thanks, Gary, for the tip!]

In 2002, Beijing University developed a Bamboo material that can be used to make clothing, which is starting to gain traction in the marketplace, given its superior qualities, including softness, biodegradability, and antibacterial properties. A pioneering bamboo apparel company is Bamboo Clothing, which utilizes bamboo grown without pesticides or fertilizer.
[via Trend Hunter and Evan Orensten]
Sensatex, a textile engineering company, is developing a smart shirt system, a wearable, and fully washable shirt with a seamlessly integrated biometric monitoring and physiological information aggregation and broadcast platform, which allows for remote monitoring of data, including heart rate, respiration and body temperature. The shirt has a number of applications, including monitoring athletic performance for athletic training, home health monitoring for the elderly, remote monitoring for first responders, hazard materials workers, and soldiers in the field, and watching professional truck drivers’ vital signs to alert them of fatigue. The company has funding from DARPA.

[thanks, Oliver Starr]