WATCH ABOVE: Professional tennis player Marcos Giron talks about the Polo Ralph Lauren designed “smart t-shirt” he wears.
The fashion industry is always looking for the next hot thing and it seems that technology is in this season, with more and more companies in the United States coming out with wearable tech.
Professional tennis player Marcos Giron has begun wearing a so-called “smart t-shirt” designed by Polo Ralph Lauren that features technology created by Canada’s OmSignal.
Giron then uses the data to help improve his game.
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“It’ll really help me understand my body, what I need to do to recover faster and improve. I mean especially with the respiration rate, the heart rate monitor and the ability to track how strong and all the acceleration and all the forces that are put into the game,” he said.
Ralph Lauren isn’t only targeting professional athletes. It is coming out with a line of smart shirts next year that it hopes will appeal to all ages and lifestyles.
New York-based fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, which is best known for its handbags, is also getting into the smart accessories game.
It has designed a bracelet that uses Bluetooth technology to notify the wearer when they have received a call or a text.
Co-founder Uri Minkoff said the bracelet has been designed to make women less focused on their phones and more free to interact with the person in front of them.
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“Let’s have a situation when the girl, or woman, can actually take her phone, put it away, but if she gets a call or a text from someone that’s very important to her the bracelet will vibrate and notify her. So in that case she can say ‘hey, you know what, let me actually take a break, let me pause. I actually have to take this call but besides that I’m focused on you, I’m with you’,” he said.
Minkoff also has a bracelet that doubles as a phone charger cord.
“We didn’t want you to buy it for the tech. We wanted our consumer to buy because hey that’s an amazing bracelet and I would buy that bracelet for that price because I love the bracelet. The fact that it has some technology in it, that’s an additional boost,” said Minkoff.
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