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A SHIRT which rolls up its own sleeves when you get too warm has been
unveiled by a tech-savvy Italian fashion house. And what’s more, its inventors
say it will never need ironing.

The fabric for the prototype shirt is woven from fibres of the shape-memory
alloy nitinol, interspersed with nylon. The alloy can be deformed, and then
returned to its original shape when heated to a certain temperature.

It is this shape memory property that is key to how the “memory metal shirt”
works. “The sleeve fabric is programmed to shorten as soon as the room
temperature becomes a few degrees hotter,” says Susan Clowes, a spokeswoman for
Corpo Nove of Florence, the shirt’s developer.

“Even if the fabric is screwed up into a ball, pleated and creased, a blast
from a hairdryer pops it back to its former shape,” Clowes says. This means the
shirt can be ‘ironed’ as you are wearing it. “It’s a travellers’ dream,” she
says.

And because the fabric’s weave has five nylon fibres to every nitinol fibre,
clothing made from it is also washable and non-allergenic.

But fashion victims shouldn’t expect to be able to buy one of Corpo Nove’s
intelligent shirts next time they’re out shopping. The prototype shirt cost
around £2500 to make, and is available in any colour you
like—provided you have a tendency to wear metallic grey, that is. “But it
looks distinctly bronze-coloured in some lights,” says Clowes.