"Smart Clothing". Between Fashion and Thecnology

Fabric has always had a covering and a symbolic use. Nowadays, new tissues are being developed and designed; these have the ability to store energy, interact with the body and the external environment in an adaptive exchange of data. Clothing becomes a device that reshapes the experience of being dressed and produces actual effects. These new fabrics seem on the verge of revolutionising the fashion world and improving human life. Fabrics integrated with photovol- taic, flexible, washable and wearable components will enable the incorporation of functions into garments to manage the issues of everyday life, from the most obvious (e.g. cooling or heating) to the most innovative ones. Fabric and thus gar- ments will become informational tools, linked to parameters that will be biologi- cal but also social and aesthetic. They will thus take on an even more central role in our existences, going beyond the function of a useful covering and a sign of social recognition it has played until now. Fabric is likely to become a “second skin”, a smart membrane between our epidermis and the surface of things.