Google, Levi’s Collaborate On Jacquard-Enabled Jackets

In their newest collaboration, Google and Levi’s are announcing versions of Levi’s Trucker Jacket that are Jacquard-enabled. The jackets, which include the Sherpa Trucker and Classic Trucker in men’s as well as women’s versions, will retail at $248 for the Sherpa Trucker and $198 for the Classic Trucker, according to reports.

A dongle in the jacket’s cuff links up with conductive yarns in the jacket. Users then swipe over their cuffs, hold their hands over it or tap it to make commands to their phones. They tap into the Jacquard phone app for Android or iOS to set up the meaning of each gesture with commands that span from skipping the next song to saving a location.

The app also enables users to set a gesture to turn on or off noise cancellation if they have Bose noise-canceling headphones. And users can take the dongle from garment to garment.

The technology was first developed in 2015 and introduced in a jacket two years later but never took off. The relaunch reportedly sets Jacquard up as a more modular innovation that Google along with its partners aim to move from “a bit of a gimmick,” according to reports, to a technology that people will see in more places in the months and years to come.

Ivan Poupyrev, the head of Jacquard by Google, said per reports, “Since we launched the first product with Levi’s at the end of 2017, we were focused on trying to understand and working really hard on how we can take the technology from a single product […] to create a real technology platform that can be used by multiple brands and by multiple collaborators.”

In separate news from earlier this year, researchers in Singapore have created “smart” clothing with innovations in wearable technology. The textiles can save battery life and bolster signals on wireless devices such as headphones and smartwatches.

“This T-shirt increases the wireless connectivity of devices around my body by 1,000 times,” John Ho, an assistant professor, said per a report in August. Ho noted that the technology could be utilized for the measurement of athlete or patient vital signs.