Hold the phone: this hoodie will let your mom know you miss her

Meet the smart hoodie, a wearable that doubles as a cellphone and a comfy sweatshirt. I know, who knew that technology didn’t just have to be housed on your wrist, face, or in your pocket? Finally, a wearable you can actually wear.

The hoodie, designed by two New York University ITP graduate students, allows the wearer to send text messages to preprogrammed numbers with discrete gestures. Currently, the hoodie can notify your friends when you are in class, by touching a switch on the left sleeve. It can also send your mom a message telling her that you miss her when you put up the hood and touch the sides of it. This second feature is interesting because it plays on natural gestures and corresponding emotions. You might actually be inclined to put up your hood and effectively cuddle it if you missed your mom, right?

Although this project is fairly basic, it opens up the door for other potential wearable wearables. The implication of smart clothes could be ginormous for health, technological convenience, and even emergency situations. Imagine having a shirt that picks up on physiological distress, or a pair of gloves that lets your partner know you love them when you blow a kiss, or a jacket that dials 911 when you zip it up all the way.

Some of these projects are already underway. At last month’s Re/code Coding Conference, Intel revealed its latest wearable investment: a smart shirt. The shirt is loaded with Intel sensors that measure heart rate in real time. The development of the shirt is still underway, but we are excited about the future prospects.

Even though the smart hoodie is far from a consumer product at the moment, it just might be indicative of a whole new phase of wearables. We expect smart clothes to be a pretty big trend in the year to come. But the question is, do you really want your garments to be smarter than you?