February Wearable Technology Roundup

Hello, friends! It’s been a while since the last post, at MakeFashion we’ve been crazy busy getting projects together for our biggest event, our 2015 MakeFashion Gala! Save the date, March 28^th, 2015, wearable technology will grace Calgary for one memorable night! Make sure you get you keep an eye out for ticket sales! You won’t want to miss it!

From designers to the blind wearables have had a busy few months. It’s insane how quickly the wearable movement has spread, so here are a few of the latest wearable news.

Michael Kors chief executive, John Idol, hinted interest in joining the wearables world earlier this week. With lip stick tubes and compact mirrors that double as phone chargers in talks, the fashion empire is still deciding if wearables is the next step they should take with the MK logo. It’s still up in the air the fashion company opting to take it slow.

Researchers at Oxford University have developed new smart glasses using 3D camera technology that have the potential to help blind people see! The glasses use a 3D camera and computer that detect the outline of a nearby object, which helps with depth perception and facial recognition. For roughly $750, which isn’t such an onerous cost considering the amount of technology used.

Researches and designers aren’t the only ones testing the wearable technology waters. Musician, Imogen Heap, has created her own wearable tech company, Mi Mu, and is working towards a future to music where electronic music can be played with flicks of the wrist. With music making gloves it’ll give audiences the power to physically see a musician perform adding to the already emotional and intense feels in the crowd. Electronic musicians can put on the gloves and make various movements with their hands which the glove registers as a different introduction to music software, talk about magic fingers.

Although Calgary is home to MakeFashion, the Globe and Mail has named Toronto a hotbed of pioneering wearable technology. IDC Canada recently came up with a report that looked at the Canadian wearable market from 2014-2018 and expects to see a growth over the next five years. Juniper Research also reports that the wearable tech retail revenue could reach $19-billion worldwide by 2018, up from $1.4-billion in 2013.

Wearable technology may need to be invisible if they will be successful, designers say. Designers and researchers are looking at ways to make wearable technology blend into users daily lives. Armstrip, a heart rate activity tracker is going in that direction. The tracker is designed to be stick to the wearer’s torso like a Band-Aid and left there for up to seven days at a time. Once you’re done with it, it can be taken off and recharged for further use.

From Gopros attached to uniforms that give viewers an up close view of their favourite sports to caps that monitor head impact during games. Wearables are really changing the way athletes play and how coaches monitor their teams agility, strength, and health. We’re coming into a new area where wearable technology could potentially be used to save lives on the field. Wearable technology also gives an option for fans to get so much more invested in the game, with insight to the players by monitoring stats on the field and in practice.

Despite claims that technology is having a negative impact on intimacy, tech entrepreneurs are confident that advances in wearable technology will improve peoples sex lives and you won’t even need to be in the same room as your partner. From software that allows users to interact physically via the Internet in a kind of pseudo reality experience of sex, and apps that lets users to experience sex from their partner’s point of view, even sex is getting an update of sorts.

From miracles to bizarreness, wearbles have really tapped into new areas of life. Whether you buy into the idea of wearable technology, it looks like it’s here to stay. As a wearable fashion blog, we might be a bit biased when we say that we couldn’t be more pleased!

– Article by Mary Yohannes Getaneh, a second year Journalism student at Mount Royal University and our MakeFashion intern.