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What really drives the market in inventions? As every successful inventor knows, it’s not just about how good a product is, it’s about how fashionable it becomes. Now the fashion industry itself might have met its match thanks to the latest in solar accessories and inventions - solar clothes. Solar clothes have been talked about in fashion circles for a long time, but it’s only thanks to recent technological developments that they have become a reality. This year has seen the first successfully constructed garments hit the catwalk. The big thing in solar clothing is jackets. They’re sturdily built but still flexible and comfortable to wear, with inbuilt solar panels. When you walk around in a jacket like this, you’ll have enough power to support your iPod, mobile phone and other small electronic accessories, with no need to plug them into the mains for recharging. And you won’t need bright sunny weather to make the jacket work - so long as you’re outdoors, it’ll do its job. How practical is solar clothing? Early designs were often problematic, which is what kept them from entering the mainstream market. Now, though, you can put your solar jacket through the washing machine with no harm done, without having to disconnect anything. Solar clothing designers recognise that clothing has to be functional in its own right, which is why they’ve been taking their time to get this right. You can roll around in jackets like these and they’ll still function afterwards. Solar clothing marks a revolution in our use of solar technologies. No longer is it just about expensive, large scale business and domestic projects. The latest solar accessories and inventions are about bringing things down to a personal level where we can find them useful in day to day life. Solar clothing looks set to become something which nobody will want to be without.
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