A clothing renaissance

This is you at play: gushing sweat, clothes like wet drapes. Legs dead, arms hanging. You're too hot, or too cold. And gamey too.

This is you gussied up in muscle-supporting tights, an ultra-wicking, anti-odor T-shirt, and a sleek shell inflated for extra warmth: You strut like Carl Lewis and power down like Bode Miller, with the cool and aplomb of Tom Brady.

Time was when the standard cotton uniform got you through high-school calisthenics. But then synthetic fabrics such as spandex gave the weekend warrior a stylish, sleek profile, while wicking away sweat and drying quickly.

And now the rag trade has gone further uptown, via Silicon Valley, as apparel makers are using more technological materials, and more sophisticated manufacturing processes, to make outdoor wear more functional. Clothes are lighter, more comfortable, less smelly, and, in some cases, literally wired for sound.

''Fabric technology is accelerating pretty quickly on a number of levels," said Peter Gilmore, vice president and general merchandise manager for Eastern Mountain Sports, the New Hampshire-based outfitter. And they're not just for the hard-core, the winter ice-climbers you see in the catalogs. From badminton to yoga, these clothes are being made for the tamest to the most taxing activities.

Recently, the Globe tested a small, representative sample of the many technical garments coming onto the market, or entering their next generation. We enlisted Jennifer Shultis, 36, a part-time Harvard student who also captains an adventure racing team sponsored by EMS, to help us test some of the products. Her idea of fun is entering -- and winning -- off-road triathlons, and her idea of a clothes workout is running through the brambles of Central Park.

Put a spring in your stepIt's time for spring skiing, the marathon is coming soon, and the more intrepid among us are planning ahead for summer road races and challenging outdoor expeditions. But after the winter layover, that first pounding workout of the season has you feeling more than just one year older.

Slip on a pair of CW-X tights, with their specially mapped bands of Lycra looping down the legs to provide additional, targeted support to muscles during exercise. These tights also offer a layer of restraint to keep muscles in alignment and the legs from wobbling out in the wrong direction.

The CW-X tights are a popular new entry in the expanding field of performance-enhancing clothes, which purport to make you faster or stronger. Among their attributes: engineering that follows the contours of the body, providing more supportive materials at critical junctures.

An Australian company, Skins Compression Garments, also makes tights that exert greater support at various points and muscles on the body. Other manufacturers are making similar products, such as shorts and bibs for cycling, socks for running, and shirts for general sports. The CW-X tights have a band of heavier-weight Lycra and nylon that courses down the legs to create a web of support for the muscles that come under greatest pressure during exercise, particularly around the knee.

John Wilson, executive vice president of CW-X's manufacturer, Wacoal Sports Science Corp., said the tights also keep blood circulating up through the legs, so athletes ''don't get as much lactic acid pooling. The key benefits are slowing down fatigue, minimizing fatigue, and speeding up cool down and recovery."

Our tester, Jennifer Shultis, tried the tights while recovering from a knee injury she sustained during an ultra-marathon last November. ''Putting on the tights, I immediately felt relief, and support on the knee, which seemed to indicate, 'Hey this is working,' " she said.

Shultis also tested an entirely different performance-enhancing garment -- one made with Holofiber. The fabric's maker says Holofiber absorbs light from the sun and converts it into energy that, when passed to the body, increases oxygen levels and improves blood circulation.

Shultis tried a workout top made with Holofiber, which she loved for its comfort, but wondered if it really worked or just produced a placebo-like effect.

''I can't say for sure it's working and really improving my performance. But I've never had a bad training day while wearing it."

Got stink?If you don't own any yet, do your family and friends a favor, and buy some workout clothes that don't stink after a sweaty outing. Clothes that are treated or woven with materials that kill bacteria and eliminate odors are gaining popularity.

And why stop at odors? Now outdoor wear is treated to kill bugs, block the sun's harmful rays, and even resist stains and discoloration. Wrap all of these together into a single garment and a weekend athlete can have a near-bulletproof cone of comfort.

Some clothes makers integrate antibacterial agents into fibers, others impregnate them with carbon or charcoal to kill body odors -- popular with hunters who don't want their stink scaring off the buck of their life. Still more weave microscopic particles or thin strands of yarn made from silver directly into the garment; silver has natural properties that kill bacteria.

''We're creating clothes an outdoor athlete can wear on a multi-day trip without offending their trip partners," said EMS's Gilmore.

Now, your workout clothes don't have to smell before you work out. I gave some of EMS's lightweight Techwick shirts made with silver yarn the full gym treatment -- stuffing them in my locker after a workout to ripen. I didn't get threatening letters, and the shirts were remarkably neutral in the whiff department after several days.

But EMS tester Shultis pointed out that clothes accumulate odors over time. ''The real test will come a year from now," she said.

Chillin' outIn an old brick mill in Lawrence, Allison Estabrook, a design consultant for Malden Mills Industries Inc., is weaving a new garment -- pixel by pixel. The goal is to create a pullover made of just a few pieces of fabric, to minimize seams that chafe and leak water or wind. The pullover will also have different weights and densities of fleece fibers, to vary the insulation, ventilation, and stretch depending on how different parts of the body perform during a workout.

To make it, though, Estabrook coils around a computer, and literally etches in, keystroke by keystroke, different amounts of fleece onto the computerized pattern of a pullover top.

The Malden Mills garment is among a class of clothes that try to do a smarter job of regulating the body's climate zone. In essence, these garments are supposed to keep you warm and dry, or cool and dry when you need to be.

Many have a science-fiction aura to them. Duofold and Outlast Technologies Inc. use ''phase change materials," a compound applied to fabric that absorbs heat from an overworked body, to reduce overheating, and then stores it for release later when the body gets cold. Royal Robbins makes an outdoor, button-down shirt, the Klamath Falls, with ''mineral base technology," a fabric coating that reflects lost heat back onto the body for additional warmth.

For colder weather, EMS carries a winter coat that has a network of tiny air tubes inside that you can inflate with just a few breaths to provide an extra layer of insulation. Sun's out? Release the air through the valve tucked in just below the collar.

Shultis said among her favorite items to test was a light Malden Mills Polertec top from apparel maker Ground that wicks moisture in one direction -- out.

''It seems to me a lot of fabrics are designed to pull moisture away from the skin, and then it sits there on the fabric," she said. After a snow-shoeing workout in the Ground top, ''the outside fabric was wet, and the inside was only slightly damp and my skin was slightly damp. In cold weather that's where you really get in trouble," by getting too wet.

Lights, cellphone camera, action!You're, um, ''taking a meeting" with a client on a New England slope, some Henry Rollins mood music echoing through your hood, when the screen on your sleeve indicates the boss is on line two.

Yes, thanks to Motorola and Burton Snowboards, even your skiing or boarding jacket takes incoming calls. Or you can switch to music transmitted from a player over a connection using Bluetooth technology.

These companies are also marketing a helmet and ski cap. In the jacket, stereo speakers are installed in the hood, a microphone near the collar, and the sleeve features a control panel with buttons that allow the wearer to navigate between music and phone calls.

When a call comes in, the jacket will literally pause the music, let you see the call coming in on the display panel of the module, and switch between the two, said Bruce Hawver, general manager of the companion products group for Motorola.

High-end gear maker Marmot has also created a mountain jacket with electronic components: in this case light panels on the shoulders, hood, and inside sleeves near the forearms that can signal to a rescue team or be used to read a map.

The jacket is designed for extreme ski guides, mountain rescue teams, and other emergency personnel who may need to be plucked out of a remote location during dicey conditions. Powered by a rechargeable cellphone battery, the electroluminescent panels produce a clean, clear bright light; the jacket has a control switch to flash an SOS signal.

Does it work? Shultis said she wore the jacket into a dark closet, and easily read a Chinese takeout menu by the light panels on the arms.

This spring Marmot is introducing children's backpacks and bicycle packs that will have the light panels as safety features.

And already Marmot and Motorola are at work on the next generation of jackets that will substantially raise the wow factor. Marmot is working on a jacket with a flexible, computer-like screen and soft-button controls connected to a GPS device in a sleeve.

Motorola won't give specifics about what's coming next in jackets, but Hawver hints it could involve using cellphone wireless capacity to stream video of your stomps off the half-pipe or to record a diary of jumps to share with bloggers. All well and good for teenagers, but for the rest of us, perhaps some records for posterity are better left to aging memories.

Andrew Caffrey can be reached at caffrey@globe.com.