Future textiles for high-performance apparels

Abstract This chapter discusses and describes the future technologies that will shape the future of textile materials and its impact on apparel for the next millennia and beyond. It encompasses a wide range of knowledge and disciplines, science, experimentation, and design that have made the future of textiles one of the most diverse and complex industries in the world. The advancement of fibers, yarns, textile materials, functional finishing, electronics, and clothing physiology combined together will continue to augment people's lives in a plethora of areas, in medicine, the military, firefighting, extreme sports, and many other apparel applications. Despite the progress in textile inventions, science, and also engineering, this industry has often been overlooked and undervalued by Governments, business, and the general population as a whole. It is often seen as just wearing clothes, T shirts, jeans, shirts, and many other types of normal day apparel. It is rarely understood that the manufacture of textiles is much more than this. Air bags, for example, in cars are made from textiles, designed to save our life in the unfortunate circumstance of a car crash. Protective apparel for racing car drivers, for the military personnel who fly combat aircraft, and firefighters, some of the applications in which, high-performance apparels play apart. A relatively new buzz word, smart textiles in apparels are becoming widely spread with underwears and shirts that can monitor blood pressure and respiratory measurements and also provide heat under extreme weather conditions. This chapter explains as to how important that the future of textiles has become, which have played an increasingly important role in influencing our lives. It has also been designed to highlight the fact that there is much more to textiles and apparel than meets the eye.