The moniker techwear is becoming more and more prominent as a significant force in the fashion industry. Companies like ACRONYM, CLOUDBURST, Riot Division, and many others have brought black militant utilitarianism to the fashion scene, even featuring such catchy advertising terms as “slam jam socialism” all feature varios interpretations of dark, dystopian, militant misery, because this is the new “cool.”
This is not a jab at the industry. In fact, the image we just described is indeed the goal and it features prominently in many modern action films and television shows. A contributor to Reddit summarized the phenomenon very well (slightly edited):
Why are people attracted to techwear?
Fundamentally, techwear is something that is vaguely avant-garde but hits a pre-existing sense of “cool” for many people just starting out in the world of fashion. Drawing inspiration from several decades of what we’ve been told the future should look like (in a gritty cyberpunk sense), it is kind of an easy thing for many people starting out in fashion to think about. This is especially true for people with nerdier backgrounds, and I don’t mean that judgmentally.
more on the fringes of fashion and is itself controversial. It is a terrible entry point to fashion, and to an extent its very existence is a little wonky. It very much hits a “cool” aesthetic but can very rapidly cross into the realm of big-budget cosplaying, with people looking incredibly dorky and nerdy. Much like cosplaying (as it’s frequently compared to), just wearing the outfit doesn’t grant you the “cool” that you associate with it to other people.
The cosplay (costume players) concept is certainly a big thing among Sci-Fi and superhero movie fans. And indeed, when one considers the incredible technology of Iron Man suit or Black Widow’s or Batman’s utility belts, we can see that the notion of having clothing that does something other than just keep its wearer from being naked is becoming increasingly interesting.
Techwear is much more than dystopian utilitarianism. Some very interesting thought goes into modern techwear and its beginnings are a lot more mainstream than one might suspect.
Some of those more humble beginnings are with a very accessible type of “techwear” called “outdoor wear” — you know, the kind of things one might buy in Cabela’s or REI or some other outdoor outfitter. These clothes and accessories are made of materials that offer features such as waterproofing, extremely lightweight and thin materials that are excellent at body heat retention, or the opposite, for body heat dissipation, depending on the desired activity of the person buying such clothing. Having a lightweight coat that keeps you warm at -30F, with spaces to put food packs, a compass, your smartphone and gloves and a hat for when the temperature is much higher than -30F, and perhaps a pack for a foldout solar charger, such things are great examples of practical techwear.
While these clothes are not particularly beautiful or meant to express any particular sort of fashion other than “outdoorsy”, the utility of such items cannot be overstated or overappreciated. Such clothing could save the lives of those wearing it in events like a mountain blizzard or unexpected isolation in the wilderness.
Fashion techwear is different. The emphasis here is a lot more fictitious, though the utility of the clothing is often even more sophisticated and potentially functional than the practical outdoorsman’s apparel. But the draw to tech wear appears to be in the area of “not quite reality”, as our Reddit contributor put it:
…The popularity of techwear could easily be amplified beyond its fashionability by the desire of a lot of people who don’t actually wear it.
In a way, that’s kind of cool. That’s actually pretty cyberpunk. But it does mean that the aesthetic isn’t as solidly defined as many of us would like to think it is. Personally. I am not 100% convinced techwear exists in the way people think it does; I think to a degree it’s a style that exists almost purely for still shots.
If I walk down the street even in a neon-soaked Tokyo, dressed in layers of Gore-Tex and Kevlar there’s a solid chance I look tremendously goofy. Take a picture of that exact moment, though,and it is possible the look is the exact opposite. That’s pretty cool; it is kind of transformative. But it is not as straightforward as many of us wished. The proliferation of techwear by online communities has kind of a normalizing effect on something that, at the end of the day, is actually kind of on the fringes of fashion.
As a fashion, then, is where real techwear exhibits its greatest attraction. When I first began to see what I thought was techwear advertising, what I was viewing was not so much real “techwear” as what might be called “smart” clothing. We see such an example in this video advertisement (complete with the most common musical background riff ever):
However, techwear departs from the practical to the cyberpunk. As such, many fashion creators have found amazing things to do with black, but regardless of color, the key here is strictly fashion:
One of the amazing features of any fashion trend is the matter of desirability, based on the notoriously elusive “coolness” factor. When a fashion designer achieves this target, they become able to ask for enormous amounts of money for this quality, and as such, the designers become quite interested in protecting their business and their customers from fakes.
Here is where the need to both ensure product authenticity and to keep the customers feeling extra special and extra cool takes fashion techwear even beyond the mere experience of wearing black on black… on black. Techwear that is “smart” or “connected”, allowing the owner to continue to participate in the greater elements of the fashion universe is an extremely cool way to retain and grow a customer base.
Verisium’s marriage of NFC chips and blockchain technology is perfectly suited for the techwear fashion maker. Verisium allows the customer to verify that what they are looking at on the store racks is really that cool name brand they want, and once they actually own the clothing, the fashion brand also, in effect, owns the customer, having a new direct line of communication post-sale with them.
This, too, can be deployed as a very unique fashion.
