Sensilk is elevating the common fitness wearable by incorporating it into workout gear. Their first major effort? The Flight Tech Sports Bra, complete with an embedded wearable. The Flight Tech had its soft launch in May 2015, and is scheduled to officially debut in late June.
“The technology is already out there, but it’s not embedded into the garments,” said fashion consultant Ashley Tyler, a designer for Sensilk. “And it’s not soft, it’s not supple, it’s not easy.” But the new Flight Tech Sports Bra “just feels like you’re in a regular bra,” she said.
Photo source: Sensilk
While the final product is undergoing more testing and tweaking, shoppers can pre-order the bra for $140. While this is more than a standard sports bra (which runs $20-$80 depending on brand, quality, and other factors) it is comparatively priced with wearables like the Fitbit and the Jawbone UP trackers. The bra has sensors built into the fabric, which sync via Bluetooth to a phone app that records various fitness metrics, such as heart rate and calories burned.
“We analyze all this information and give the woman a fitness goal and she or her trainer gets to see the progress over time,” Sensilk CEO Donald Yang told TODAY.com. Yang said the company is also producing a men’s workout shirt with sensors.
Photo source: Sensilk
While smart clothes may very well be the future of the fitness industry, not everyone is convinced they’ll catch on.
“There are certainly many companies investing in this sort of technology,” retail analyst Liz Dunn told TODAY.com, citing brands such as Ralph Lauren, which has partnered with OMSignal, a company that develops biometric smartwear. “The key will be to find ways to incorporate monitoring that do not limit the functionality of the garments.” In other words, clothes are going to need to be clothes first, trackers second.
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