Smart Fabrics Summit

Advances in technology have brought together the apparel, technology, and textile industries to develop new capabilities in fabrics with the potential to change how athletes, patients, soldiers, first responders, and everyday consumers interact with their clothes and other textile products.

Known as “smart fabrics,” these new high-tech products have the ability to interact with their user or the environment, including tracking and communicating data about their wearer or environment to other devices through embedded sensors and conductive yarns.

To foster greater collaboration between the U.S. apparel, technology, and textile industries and to identify the public policies that could accelerate the design and manufacture of smart fabrics products by U.S. companies, the Department of Commerce in partnership with the Industrial Fabrics Association International will host the “Smart Fabrics: Getting Smarter” Summit on Tuesday, April 24, 2018. This event will build on the success of the 2016 Smart Fabrics Summit and highlight emerging trends and new technology in this growing market.