Most wearable cooling devices add more hardware to what you are already wearing. Hissy, developed by five designers as part of Samsung Design Membership, is different though. the concept puts a CO₂-powered cooling system inside a lightweight technical jacket, turning the garment itself into an air-delivery system.
The idea comes from a fairly simple problem. Portable fans can struggle when the surrounding air is already extremely hot, while battery-powered cooling systems bring their own compromises in weight, runtime, and heat management. Hissy replaces the usual fan-and-battery setup with a small CO₂ cartridge mounted at the wrist. When the cartridge is connected, high-pressure liquid carbon dioxide vaporizes inside the cooling hardware, producing airflow at around -30 Degree Celsius.
Designer: Dongheon Kang, Minseo Jung, Yuha Ko, Juhyeon Jeon, Woohi Park
What makes the jacket interesting, however, is what happens after the cold air is generated. Rather than dumping it into the garment and hoping it reaches the right places, Hissy routes it through a tubular Air Path built into the jacket. The path follows a spiral around the body, and the jacket is cut and stitched around this structure. Its shape also helps prevent the tube from sharply bending or kinking as the wearer moves.
Small perforations along the Air Path release the cold air at selected points. The designers determined their positioning and size using thermal mapping and heat-distribution tests, concentrating the airflow around areas where the body produces more heat. That explains the unusual construction of the jacket. The visible pattern isn’t simply there for visual effect; it traces the route the cooling system needs to take through the garment.
The CO₂ cartridge itself sits in a surprisingly neat docking system. Instead of being screwed into place, it attaches magnetically. Locking protrusions keep it from being pulled straight out while the system is operating, and rotating the cartridge changes the magnetic interaction so it can be released. An internal strap and sleeve zipper keep the hardware secure around the wrist, while a chest pocket provides somewhere to carry additional cartridges.
There is also an effort to make the disposable-looking cartridge system less wasteful. Hissy proposes using CO₂ captured from industrial processes as the cooling medium. Once a cartridge is empty, it can be collected, inspected, refilled, and returned to circulation. The designers see this as a way of keeping both the cartridge and the captured gas within a reuse cycle rather than treating them as single-use components.
For now, Hissy is a design concept rather than a product you can buy, but the team isn’t limiting the idea to jackets. Its proposed roadmap includes applying the same cooling technology to footwear, followed by products such as outdoor can coolers. A later version could even become a thermal-management system for machines working outdoors in high temperatures, including delivery robots and drones.
