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Wearable Tech Is Bringing the Fashion Industry to Silicon Valley

If we’re expected to adorn ourselves with smart gadgets, they damn well better look good.
On the catwalk wearing Google Glass, photo via Flickr

Fashion and technology have historically mixed as well as oil and water, but now the looming wearable tech craze is forcing a convergence of the two industries. No matter how cutting-edge or convenient these new smart accessories are, if we’re expected to adorn ourselves with them they damn well better look good too.

The major tech companies—Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, even Dell—are competing to come out at the top of the emerging market, which some analysts predict will be a $10 billion business in the next three years. To win this one, they’re going to have to venture outside their comfort zone and into the illusive world of style.

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Google and Apple know this well already, albeit for different reasons. Google Glass is an incredible invention—a huge step toward the cybernetic organism—yet it’s received more ridicule than awe from the majority of consumers, largely because it looks too nerdy to break out past the Silicon Valley niche. So Google's taking action. It reportedly partnering with the hippest eyewear brand out there, Warby Parker, to help make Glass cooler. It also paraded the product out on the runway during fashion week last year in hopes of boosting its image.

Apple of course is well familiar with the money-earning power of slick design, though it's never had to walk its Macbooks down a runway. But the brand has been losing steam as its products go from luxury and exclusive to commonplace and ubiquitous—Barneys to Macy's.

This week Apple announced it hired Paul Deneve, former CEO of Yves Saint Laurent, to oversee wearable tech. No, he won’t be designing a high-end iWatch; Deneve will oversee brand appeal by managing the product’s introduction to the marketplace. Wearable tech is an chance to dominate a new market, and the former fashion executive is there to make sure Apple doesn't blow the opportunity.

The news stuck many as a sign of what’s to come—Big Tech in bed with the style gurus. There may be no way around it. “There’s a reason we all make fun of someone wearing a Bluetooth or a BlackBerry holster,” Daniella Yacobovsky, cofounder of the online jewelry retailer BaubleBar told The New York Times. “Is it useful? Of course it is. Do I look like a tool? Yeah. I’m not going to wear it.”

Ubiquitous computing won’t stop at watches and glasses. The trend is expected to consume the whole range of accessories—rings, belts, shoes, even tattoos. The fashion world is wary that technology companies will steal precious human real estate from them, replacing fine jewelry and accessories with expensive computers.

For yet another industry, it's adapt or die. The fashion brands should be tripping over themselves to get in the game. But so far none of the big guys, excepting maybe Warby Parker and now Deneve, are jumping in.

It’s up to the young designers to test the bounds of tech-inspired clothing. We've seen these amazing designs popping up left and right in the last year. The midi controller jacket turns your body into a music player—tap to start a beat, swipe to change, raise your arm to up the tempo. There’s the gaze-activiated dress that becomes illuminated when someone looks at it, and another LED-lit dress that shows the real-time heartbeat of whoever is wearing it. The Twitter dress lights up with animations and receives real-time tweets in real time via hashtag #tweetthedress.

With both sides of the equation innovating fast, fashion and tech will eventually overlap. For better or worse, we should expect to see a new era of smart gadgets ushered in where aesthetic is just as important as functionality. Companies will have to master both to come out on top.