Fashion trends and futures, in bullet points
Little biotech this time, instead notes from reading and listening to actual fashion experts
A few months ago I spent some hours consuming content about the fashion industry itself to better understand what it’s all about, beyond new biotech-based materials. I found out about the most bizarre yet fascinating things, from landmark buildings as part of a marketing strategy, to live shopping in China, and hyper-realistic robots that are Instagram influencers.
I scribbled down some notes and put them together somehow, with links to some of those sources. I didn’t write too many comments but perhaps my greatest learning is that there are many other (potentially easier) ways to make fashion more sustainable than materials. For example, making more efficient manufacturing machinery and reducing the return rate of clothes.
Throughout this exploration I consistently asked what I now call The Chesky Question. The AirBnB cofounder and CEO mentioned in his Stanford Business School interview that social changes are much harder to predict than technological ones. So my question was: how are people changing nowadays, and how is that changing fashion?
21 Trends
“If a 15- or 16-year-old is doing it today, chances are pretty high that you and I will be doing the same thing in a few years”
Social media as a search engine: Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to search for, interact and purchase through social media rather than go for search engines and branded websites
Bots can act as virtual stylists: offering fashion advice and helping customers put together outfits.
Virtual try-ons: address the challenge of returns, which continues to pose a significant hurdle for fashion e-commerce (>24%). Businesses can operate more sustainably by reducing this kind of waste.
Phygital fashion: incorporating digital elements into traditional fashion design. NFT shoes that you can also buy and get shipped to your house.
Extravagant fashion: almost half of Gen Z consumers expect brands and designers to offer trends they can experiment with, which they wouldn’t otherwise try in real life. Buh bye SV Zuckers.
RFID supply chain tracking: to provide customers with detailed information on the entire supply chain, Zara, Adidas, and H&M use RFID tech to collect data of identified products.
Gender fluidity: inclusivity and diversity are increasingly important in fashion, with size representation and emerging as key factors.
Comfort: fashion has been moving in an increasingly comfortable direction for decades.
Mental health: enormous tailwind due to the pandemic and likely to boost the outdoor market in the long term.
Antiviral properties: Polygiene from Sweden and HeiQ from Switzerland have developed special finishes for textiles that kill viruses and bacteria, thus helping people feel safer.
Subscriptions(?) Generation Z is more interested in using products rather than owning them.
Metaverse stores? Fashion brands can sell their products not only in the real world, but via NFTs in games like Roblox and Fortnite.
Live shopping: in China, 20 percent of online trade already takes place via live shopping on social media.
AI-aided design: generative clothes that help designer imagine new possibilities, perhaps create the actual design files as well. Alena Stepanova.
Embedding culture into materials: knitwear made from organic yarn, upcycling coconut shells to use as buttons. Link is no longer working:(
Slow fashion? I’ve heard of it, I’m skeptical on people (especially my generation) wanting to give up novelty for impact. As I understand it, either recycling or subscribing would be much better.
Modern masculinity: men are now avoiding the macho image of the past, like they’re taking care of the babies. This market is going to grow a lot.
Buildings as ads: architects want to make incredible buildings, brands want to be remembered, we need social housing. Think about a Nike health building, or an H&M diversity building.
Video: we watch tv while we scroll down instagram, so why are we relying on a single image for a single season in fashion? Hire filmmakers over advertisers.
Gamification: making the process fun and engaging for both buyers and sellers, whether that’s through chats, fan groups, online forums, and other tools that help create community and an emotional connection.
Top 0.1%
“It’s much harder to predict sociological changes than technological ones” - Bryan Chesky
CFO of LVMH: “We don’t sell [most Luis Vuitton] products to rich people. We sell them to people who have money and want to indulge themselves”.
“How can we maximize desire with this product? Luxury for me is how can you create desire”.
Fashion brands have not been doing well after the pandemic. The middle class has cut their expenses on luxury. Brands that serve the top 0.1% have not experienced such reductions.
Now that old money is becoming popular among the middle class, what will the top 0.1% do next?
Why are brands like Luis Vuitton and Dior so successful? They are timeless and modern at the same time.
Couture open-sourced designs so even when young people can’t buy them, they fall in love and start a relationship with the brand.
Sustainability
Conscious Maximalists are 23% more likely to believe that sustainable products are oversold. They don’t live up to the hype.
Conscious Maximalists are 75% more likely to do more than most people when it comes to sustainability.
“I think we’ll see a dramatic shift away from the multitrillion-dollar retail market toward the $300 billion luxury market. People will realize that durable products made with real craftsmanship result in higher residual value, and they’ll be able to resell those products.”
Renewcell breaks down used cotton and other cellulose-rich textiles and transforms them into a new, biodegradable raw material that can be used to make virgin quality viscose or lyocell textile fibers.
Clothing recycling and textile recycling are independent topics. Textile waste arises out of production processes like fiber and filament manufacture, spinning, weaving, knitting, clothing manufacturing.
Challenge: clothing may have many components such as labels, sewing threads, buttons, zippers, and interlining, all of which make the separation process difficult.
Recycled fibers are used to make a variety of products. Recycled pre-consumer textile wastes are used in the construction, automotive, furniture, paper, and clothing industries.
By 2030, it might be possible to make new clothes out of postconsumer waste and carbon emissions. Just like with plastics, the best solution to fashion sustainability might be recycling.
The fashion industry could champion regenerative farming and systemic changes that consumers actually see the impact of. Then it’s not just using less resources but actively helping the environment.
Agraloop: transforms crops leftovers into fabric.
Newlight: PHB from microbes
H&M and Lanzatech partnership to make clothes from CO2
Futures
“Why do we wear clothes, in the first place? We first invented them to protect us from the cold but we’re now using them to feel and signal something”.
Phase change, shape memory, chromic, conductive, UV-protecting, anticrease and fluorescent whitening agents, water repellence, self-cleaning, flame-retardant, anti-phone radiation, menstrual underwear.
Infrared textiles that absorb energy from the sun, then radiate it back onto the body at specific wavelengths to enhance blood circulation, rejuvenate of skin and muscle tissue, or promote regeneration.
What if we could wear AI, literally? Like, our phones are somehow already part of our outfit these days. Now have clothes with electronics that read your body, your thoughts, think about it, and talk to you?
Unconventional materials: seaweed powder, soy cashmere (from the surplus of tofu production), rose petal silks (from fallen rose petals, dyed with natural pigments).
Think beyond fashion: astronauts, firefighters, athletes, cooks, physicians, soldiers, F1 drivers, construction workers, scuba divers, swimmers, ski sports athletes — they all need to wear special type of clothing.
Vanity clothing works on the premise of compressing, lifting, or supporting specific body parts in order to create an artificially sculpted and perfectly shaped body.
Extroverted and introverted: the former externalizes things like aroma, sound, and texture. The latter react to internal and external conditions but only for the wearer.
Pants with sensors for yoga feedback
Haptics so deaf people can feel music.
Responsive textile from MIT Media Lab.
Clothes designed from BCI readings.
