Looking Hot : The Latest Craze in Sportswear Changes Colors When You Lose Your Cool
Mike Akioka eyes a rack of T-shirts at The Broadway in Puente Hills Mall and then gives in to temptation.
The 12-year-old grabs a blue T-shirt, squeezes, holds on, then releases his hand, watching a pink splotch magically appear. “Cool,” Akioka mumbles.
Many other junior high school-age customers, along with older teen-agers and young adults, echo his opinion. Sales of heat-sensitive color-changing T-shirts and other sportswear are brisk, clerks say.
Kids ask for the shirts “before we even get them in,” says Connie Carrillo of Mervyn’s in Glendale. The appeal? The garb is unusual and an instant icebreaker, wearers say.
Recession or not, sportswear makers are gambling that customers will pay nearly double the price of a plain T-shirt for the novelty of wearing one that temporarily changes color when they sweat or the temperature soars. In the past few months, at least three companies have introduced the chameleon sportswear to stores:
* Generra Sportswear’s Hypercolor line, which debuted in January, includes T-shirts priced at about $24, says Steve Miska, chairman of the Seattle-based company. Many plain shirts change to an old-fashioned tie-dye pattern when the temperature reaches about 80. Blue turns pink; green turns yellow. Generra reports sales of more than $100 million for the new line.
* Timberline Design of Provo, Utah, began selling its $24 color-changing T’s to stores in June, says Steve Robinette, vice president of sales. There are 12 designs, including one of a surfer that changes colors.
* Touch Me Tees, a line produced in Fullerton, will debut at a Los Angeles trade show later this month, priced at about $15 in kids’ sizes and $17 in adults’. The designs include scenes of a beach and of endangered animals that disappear, says Shelly Melcer of Perfect Match. She will sell the line, which also includes sweat shirts and boxer shorts, to gift and novelty stores.
The color change depends on two heat-sensitive dyes. “A combination of body temperature and environmental temperature makes it change color. It is a gradual change, with those parts touching your body changing first,” Generra’s Miska says. When things cool down, the clothing returns to its original color.
So exerting yourself in these trendy T’s could be embarrassing? Their makers say no. But Martha Ruvalcaba, 21, of Hacienda Heights, disagrees. “A girlfriend has one,” she said as she scanned a rack of color-changing T-shirts, “and when she sweats you can tell.” But Ruvalcaba still plans to buy one.
Skeptics say the novelty shirts will prove as short-lived as summer. But Generra is already expanding its line. And Melcer says her Perfect Match boxer shorts, with lovers that smooch and disappear inside a heart, could be a holiday bestseller.
