The winter season is over, no more iPod Jackets and other Wearable Electronic winter gear.
Levis, a well known contributor to the Wearable Electronic trend – think about the ICD+ Jacket, co-developed and designed between Philips Design and Levis – has not less than eleven new styles of jeans and trousers for men and women in their collection for the spring/summer 2007 season.
That’s excellent news for us iPod addicted folks that need iPod compatible outfits after we got used to that over the last winter season.
This new collection for 2007 follows the successful retail launch of the Red Wire DLX jeans in Fall 2006. It is also highly noticeable that next to the high product sales, Levi Strauss has reported that the Fibretronic enabled products have added US$5 billion of brand equity to Levis.
Now this is ‘music in our ears’ as well. We from CrunchWear are fully convinced that Wearable Electronics is on the verve of becoming ‘big’ business and this massive launch from no one less than Levis is yet another ‘proof’ of our statement.
Like the first ‘RedWire DLX’ jeans so does the new collection incorporate a custom designed iPod control system developed by Fibretronic.
he RedWire DLX jeans use Fibretronic’s ‘Fiddler‘ joystick controller to operate the usual iPod functions play/pause, rewind, fast forward, volume up and volume down. The system includes an audio socket embedded in the watch pocket to provide a remote port for the connection of earphones.
A textile cable, designed in Levis signature red color, carries the joystick commands and audio signals from the watch pocket, through the jeans and into the dedicated iPod pocket located on the thigh. The textile cable connects to Fibretronic’s iPod interfacing electronics which are housed in a specially designed cradle that also functions as a docking station for the iPod.
The partnership between Levis and Fibretronics turned out quite successful and we can not await the moment the new collection will be released for ‘public viewing’ and in the shops.
Judging form the previous RedWire DLX, we expect a prize tag of around $ 250.-
If they look cool (this time) we might jump in(on) one. Make sure you check again our Blog, we will bring the complete range as soon as it is available.
[source: Fibretronic]
