Whatever fashion designers are designing for the future can be bought now
There are already a few items of clothing today that bring to mind the distant future, such as solar-powered jackets that change color in the dark or dresses that can be individually adjusted using 3D printing. But this is just the beginning. Designers who are thinking about tomorrow’s fashion today must take climate change and resource scarcity into account in their planning in the future in order to get the fashion industry to rethink. Because it is one of the most environmentally harmful industries in the world.
That’s why not only fashion design itself is an issue, but also environmentally friendly production processes with the aim of producing neutral collections. International design labs, including the Austrian designers Julia Körner and Flora Miranda, research sustainable, smart fabrics and design processes and also take “fairness” into account.
Fashion companies like Gucci & Co are studying future shopping behavior and will increasingly design fashion collections for the virtual space in which you can shop for fashion. If you’re still wondering what to wear to the office today, in the future you’ll be thinking about what look is right for your appearance in the digital space. Customers are already buying luxury outfits twice. Once to look stylish in real life, and a second time for her Roblox avatar to look good in the metaverse.
If you want to shop at Gucci, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton & Co in the meta cities , you pay with cryptocurrencies like MANA, tokens like SAND and AXS. Today the most common payment methods on Metaverse platforms such as Decentraland, The Sandbox and Axie Infinity. Luxury labels see the Metaverse as a laboratory, have fun with it and design fantastic gowns.
A trend that, according to Anna Wintour, head of the US edition of Vogue, will grow. “Designers who work like this are becoming more famous and influential than ever. I’m excited to see what they do next,” Wintour said at Vogue China’s Metaverse World launch, where young designers showed off their designs.
The fashion scientists Flora Miranda and Julia Körner are researching design processes in order to automate production so that garments are only produced when they are bought. Miranda also asks herself how data can be used for fashion.
“Data has been at the center of my work for years. The book Einstein’s Veil by Nobel Prize winner Anton Zeilinger changed my view of the world.” The Salzburg resident uses her customers’ data sets, which she obtains from social media channels, and uses them to make personalized silicone dresses. Sometimes she writes the code for it herself. “My ‘IT pieces’ have nothing to do with It girls, but stand for IT, i.e. information technology.”
The changeable items of clothing respond to individual customer data, such as personal well-being and temperature. “The data-driven design approach will be completely normal in future fashion if I do my job well and will be as normal as weaving or knitting — now long-established technologies,” said the designer.
Julia Körner, on the other hand, uses biodegradable material in her 3D printing technology and produces locally. Her couture fashion pieces have also been shown at Paris Fashion Week. The fashion fabrics themselves will also become more sophisticated and individually customizable in the future.
Smart sensors regulate heat in winter jackets, such as the heated, waterproof jackets from AlphaTauri, the RedBull fashion label that invests in new technologies. Since 2020, the label has been producing collections of smart, heated clothing in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom and Schoeller Textil AG.
The designer duo Nick and Steve Tidball also produce jackets under their survival wear label Vollebak that are powered by solar energy, glow at night and can even be written on. Antibacterial clothing and indestructible Mars jackets equipped with a gravity pocket are also in development. Because solid quality that accelerates the change from fast to slow fashion and produces fashion that has no expiration date is becoming increasingly important. The trend towards plant-based materials is also continuing.
, known for her leather bondage skirts, now makes them out of Piñatex, vegan leather . In the future, we will wear clothes that can respond independently to our personal needs.