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- Aug 20, 2006
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Google and Levi Strauss have begun selling their so-called smart jacket: “Jacquard Threads” woven into the cuff and wirelessly connected to your mobile phone using tiny electronics embedded inside the sleeve and a flexible snap tag allow for notifications with light and haptic feedback, and wearers can assign gestures to invoke different digital “abilities” such as playing and stopping music. Unfortunately, the fabric can only survive being washed 10 times.
I certainly need to wash my jackets less often than I wash my jeans, but I also hang on to my jackets for far longer -- and I can promise you, all my coats have been washed (or dry cleaned) more than ten times. It's certainly puzzling that the same company whose CEO in 2014 announced that “We are the ultimate in sustainable apparel. If you buy [our jeans] they will last a lot longer than most people’s waistlines will" is now selling a $350 item that won't retain full functionality longer than a couple years of relatively light use.
I certainly need to wash my jackets less often than I wash my jeans, but I also hang on to my jackets for far longer -- and I can promise you, all my coats have been washed (or dry cleaned) more than ten times. It's certainly puzzling that the same company whose CEO in 2014 announced that “We are the ultimate in sustainable apparel. If you buy [our jeans] they will last a lot longer than most people’s waistlines will" is now selling a $350 item that won't retain full functionality longer than a couple years of relatively light use.