What will people wear in the future?

a new wave of innovation is fueling a radical change in fashion wearable technology data automation and lab-grown materials will have a major impact on what people will be wearing in the future we are just seeing a pace of change which is frightening but it's also incredibly exciting for the future of fashion [Music] since the birth of sewing and weaving technology has always led developments in fashion the Industrial Revolution mechanized manufacturing enabling mass production in the 1960s synthetic materials like polyester took off creating new possibilities for fashion now the convergence of new technologies is opening up previously unimaginable possibilities self-styled fashion scientist dr. Amanda Parkes is in the vanguard of the industry's latest reinvention she heads up innovation at Ft labs a venture capital firm that invests primarily in disruptive fashion tech startups the future of fashion is a mixture of combining new material technologies with all new forms of business models among these startups the race is on to find the next generation of renewable materials that can be grown in a lab so one example of this is bolt threads which creates loud groan spider silk traditional silk is produced from insect larvae that form cocoons most commonly silkworms but rather than relying on these insects bolt threads is creating silk in test tubes so they've taken the DNA out of a spider just the part of the DNA that creates silk and transform that into a microorganism into a yeast and you can think of it like brewing beer so as they feed the yeast as it brews it creates silk protein bio fabricated materials remove the need for animals and insects and they are a more sustainable and efficient way of producing raw materials you're able to speed up this process put it into a controlled environment in the laboratory and have a lot more control over what you're growing and how other companies are creating leather alternatives rather than using animals scientists are creating bio fabricated materials from pineapple leaves and even mushrooms another example is a mycelium based leather so the root structure of strains of mushrooms can be grown synthetically in a lab but they're all natural fibers when you think about the convergence of what technology can do with this in terms of the future development of materiality and so we really have the opportunity to make huge global change by changing the means of production of materials the convergence of fashion and technology also provides opportunities to transform not just clothes but the people wearing them Mayon is a company that's pioneering the creation of clothing that can monitor your every move we call it textile computing some other people call it the smart fabric essentially it's a is an interactive fabric that could sense data from you so called smart fabrics are being touted as the next frontier of wearable technology yarns are paired with electronic sensors so that essential data can be captured from the human body this is a men's boxer you can see the sensors embedded on the band and on the body within seconds it will start transmitting your ECG temperature your movement your respiration to create clothing that can monitor the wearer's health and fitness my aunt has brought together teams of people that have not traditionally worked under the same roof we have the advanced research engineers and scientists at nano scale technology electrical engineers mechatronics engineers software AI we wanted them to interface and to interact with fashion designers with pattern makers smart fabrics could radically change consumers relationships with the clothes they wear but as technology increases the pace of change how can the industry keep track of what consumers really want [Music] Franchesca Mustang is the head of retail at WGSN the world's leading fashion forecasting agency we are just seeing a pace of change which is frightening but it's also incredibly exciting to the future of fashion the staff here use big data to analyze political social and environmental trends in order to predict the hot new looks of tomorrow if we think back over the last five years how the fashion industry has changed think about the way that we shop compared to the way that we used to shop technology is driving an explosion in consumer choice as well as the bewildering array of clothing design and creation to keep up the industry is also turning to technology we are for sure in the midst of a digital revolution AI the idea of kind of machine learning and Big Data how do we start to sort of synthesize all of these new technologies and start to make sense of it both in terms of industry but also in terms of the consumer machine learning technologies are now central to fashion forecasting quickly spotting patterns among the ever-growing volume of data from biotechnology to demographic shifts predicting trends is no longer an art it's becoming a science

Channel: The Economist

Views: 247,053

Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, fashion, fashion trends, wearable technology, wearable tech, clothing, wearables, smart clothing, future technology, future fashion, innovation, fashion innovation, the economist, economist, economist films, economist videos, what will people wear in the future, future clothes

Id: uMOAbNfmEuo

Length: 6min 24sec (384 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 10 2019