Google and Levi's will launch touch-enabled jacket that lets you control music, maps, and more in spring 2017, the first consumer garment for Project Jacquard
At Google's I/O conference today, Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) research unit offered an update …
Context & Ripple Effects
At I/O 2016, Google's ATAP skunkworks moved Project Jacquard from concept demo to its first consumer product: a touch-enabled Levi's jacket that turns sleeve gestures into music, map, and call controls. The spring 2017 target slipped — follow-up reporting put the Levi's Commuter Trucker Jacket at roughly $350, shipping fall 2017 — but the partnership itself held, making Levi's the launch brand for conductive-yarn textiles.
First-order effects
- Levi's gains a differentiated connected-commuter product line built on Google's touch-sensitive fabric, while ATAP graduates from conference demos to shipping consumer hardware for the first time under the Jacquard banner.
Second-order effects
- A ~$350 price point establishes the premium benchmark for smart garments, pressuring other apparel brands to decide between partnering with a tech platform's textile stack or ceding the connected-clothing category to early movers like Levi's.
Third-order effects
- If the ATAP model holds — the lab was later profiled running both Jacquard fabrics and Soli, the radar chip behind Motion Sense in Pixel phones — big-tech research units increasingly operate as component licensors, embedding their sensors into third-party product categories rather than building devices themselves.
The trend: Big-tech research labs are converting speculative sensor and textile projects into branded consumer products through partnerships with established apparel and device makers.