Imagine removing the jacket and absent-mindedly swiping a  sleeve over a sensor to pay for your groceries. If someone grabs  the jacket -- containing your DNA code and your entire banking  history -- and runs out of the store, it is programmed to start  shouting "Thief, Thief."  

What worries you is not that someone has just stolen your  DNA code -- that, after all, can be recovered -- but the thief  has taken a jacket that can also perform automatic acupressure  and time release Prozac skin infusions into your body, so you  are in danger of losing your cool at any minute.  

As technology grows ever more sophisticated in the new  millennium, the term "power suit" will take on a new, more  literal meaning. Much of the fabric from which clothes are cut  will contain microscopic computers, fiber optics and wires woven  into the threads, making them interactive with daily routines  and body chemistry, fashion and textile experts said.  

Garments of the future will clean and mend themselves, grow  or shrink to fit a variety of shapes and sizes, change colors  and temperatures, translate foreign languages, pay our bills  instantaneously and read e-mail aloud.  .
 
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NEW FABRICS THROUGH NANOTECHNOLOGY  

If that were not enough, so-called molecular nanotechnology  will create new fabrics actually containing tiny computers built  to atomic specifications, said David Forrest, a materials  engineer with Baverstam Associates.  

Such technology, which Forrest said may be available in as  little as 20 years, would enable fabrics to mend and clean  themselves constantly by moving dirt to the edge, the way cilia  behave in the lungs when moving mucus away from the nose and  throat. It will also give birth to lightweight mutant fabrics  that will change shape to fit their wearers and transmit data  effortlessly.  

"You could have little sensors in this thing to detect a  rip that would then send little microscopic repair machines over  to that part of the garment," Forrest said. "It would be like  putting on a new piece of clothing every 15 minutes. It would  make recycling obsolete."  

Garments would likely change colors easily, he said. "If  you could just change a molecular arrangement so that it alters  the way various wavelengths reflect off it, you could change the  color. You could do that at a very fine grain level."  

Nanotechnology will also enable humans to more easily  regenerate their skin to a more youthful form, Forrest said. In  the process, plastic surgeons as we know them today may become  obsolete -- unless, of course, they perfect what they are  working on now: weekend face lifts to repair loose muscle  tissue, remove fat pockets and tighten skin without surgery.  

Maplewood, New Jersey, plastic surgeon Michael Valdes uses  sound waves to liquefy body and facial fat, then removes it with  liposuction. A head and neck wrap is then worn for two weeks at  night to mold and tighten the new facial contours.