MIT Professor Designing Jeans Made For Sitting

PITTSBURGH (CBS) -- When it comes to comfortable clothes, jeans are usually near the top of the list for most people.

At an MIT lab, jeans are getting a scientific makeover so they can be even more comfortable, particularly for people who sit for long stretches.

Elazar Edelman, both a physician and a professor, runs the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center which is where "FYT Jeans" were created.

"There are a variety of modifications to the design around the knee," says Edelman. "Most clothes are fit or designed for us to fit when we are standing. You've never had anything tailored in a sitting position. The zipper on the back is a very important and innovative design."

Edelman collaborated with designers in Portugal to create jeans meant for people who sit most of the day. There's a hidden zipper which can be opened before sitting or bending.

"The waist band has elasticity where it needs to have elasticity," Edelman says. "They're a dynamic fit. That means that when you sit, very many of the components of the jeans move with you.

That means more comfort for office workers who sit an average of nine hours a day. But the project started as a way to give wheelchair dependent people clothes that are safe.

FYT Jeans don't bunch up behind the knee.

"It's extra material, extra pressure. It's uncomfortable and it can actually be unsafe," Edelman says. '"It's everything from a little irritation to when people have diabetes or poor circulation, developing sores that never heal."

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Changing up everyday jeans could just be the start to how clothes and even other materials could improve our lives.

"You could certainly embed all kinds of sensors in them, and you could even give something, or embed something that was itself therapeutic," Edelman says.

Right now, FYT Jeans offers only a few styles for women and men, and only in select sizes. They're trying to raise money through Kickstarter to design and produce more varieties.