Wearable Italia produces handcrafted wearable technology, ranging from fitness trackers to incognito emergency call buttons. This company’s high end fashionable technology is redefining what wearable tech can look like and pushing back against the trendy choice of mass manufactured plastic gizmos.
Clever Tech Digest sat down with founder, Andrea Tomassini, to discuss the concept of Meta luxury wearable technology, and its importance not only to users, but to our global economy.
Read on to learn more.
1. For our readers just learning about Wearable Italia, please describe your team's background and Wearable Italia's origin story.
The story starts in Milan five years ago when I saw the Frist FashTech application, a dress using fiber optics to change colour depending on user health status, and I understood the potential of the Internet of Things and wearable technology. My imagination took flight on how to give to people something useful. I focused my thinking on giving special attention to providing women with a sense of security regarding their safety and health. So, I wrote a patent to protect my idea, and then we found the partners I needed to build and to design my concept.
Today Wearable Italia has over five partner companies including artisan manufacturers, emerging designers and electronic engineers, all heterogeneous elements united by a common purpose: to promote a unique technological and aesthetic experience.
Our market niche is definitely tech fashion combined with meta-luxury, the ultimate luxury. Mass production is not our thing- we founded our startup with the purpose of giving freshness to Italian artisan traditions, while still preserving their priceless value. This is why industrial processes are absolutely excluded from the production of Wearable Italia’s products. Italian luxury products are notable for their absolute uniqueness, a feature that has made Italy famous all over the world.
2. What is "Meta Luxury," and how has that concept shaped Wearable Italia's business model and designs?
For Meta Luxury we intend to preserve the made in Italy story with our artisan craftsmanship and our beautiful design. Our luxury brand strives to improve business, we want to improve tradition and offer the value of extreme innovation with a real made in Italy product that you can dress up. This is for us a meta luxury product, a jewelry that is made completely in Italy by an artisan. Each piece has a story behind it, a limited process and no industrial production. Meta Luxury is priceless, and so are Italian artisan traditions.
3. What are the main limitations and obstacles you face developing luxury wearable technology? How have you overcome them?
The main limitation for us is putting the electronics board inside a handmade metal body. In the artisanal process we have a lot of problems connecting the two extremely different worlds. For example, because we use only noble materials that create a shield for bluetooth transmission, the bluetooth signal requires very particular engineering to allow the computing board to access and control its paired device. Plastic or some other of cheap material is easier to use, but does not fulfill our objectives of connecting Italian handmade traditions and Meta Luxury to wearable technology.
4.What guiding principles focus your team on developing desirable and meaningful Coded Couture instead of just another gadget?
Our guide is to design and build a line of products in the Fashion Tech market, while preserving our Italian value, our Italian style, and our Italian tradition. Wearable Italia does not intend to build a gadget, but instead a Fashion art product aided by technology.
Our company drives Italian fashion and craftsmen to remain relevant in an emerging high-tech fashion industry and a quickly changing global production landscape.
5. Paint me two pictures:
1. Your dream scenario for when connected apparel becomes globally popular and accessible.
Beautiful fashion products that give people a better life with Technology and that connects artists, craftsmen, designers, and engineers together to create a world of wonder.
2. Your fears about the future high-tech fashion industry.
it’s about the possibility that the people fear to dress in technology, but I believe that the technology can help people. I am hopeful that the Internet of things world will set a course to build better and non-invasive technology.
Wearable Italia Application Interface