While we couldn’t make the trek across the Atlantic for yesterday’s Interlaced 2015 runway show and discussions, it is a great opportunity to look at fashion tech and contemplate what the future might hold. Theoretically fashion tech has so much potential, but currently it feels nonexistent in our daily lives. Besides enhanced textiles, there are very few fashion tech items being sold to the public. Part of that is a technology and cost issue, but it also is a perception issue, and that is changing.
The past 12 months have been huge for wearable technology. Up until now, most devices have been $150 or less and were extremely specialized in functionality. With the release of a slew of Android Wear devices and the Apple Watch consumers are beginning to become more comfortable with wearing technology and paying a premium for it. A smartwatch is really the first piece of personal technology that is on display. A phone is thrown into your pocket, but a watch is in plain sight constantly. There is no discrete way to use it, once you raise your wrist to look at the time or interact with it, it is obvious you are using a smart watch. From personal experience,
it felt very uncomfortable at first to be in public with a smartwatch but now I don’t give it a second thought. Once a rarity, it has reached the point that it is not uncommon to come across someone wearing a smartwatch. The Apple Watch also proved that people are willing to pay a premium for a capable connected device. In fact, after Apple’s relative success in the market, competitors are releasing new models that are more expensive than the ones they are replacing.
Yes, wearable technologies, such as smartwatches, aren’t fashion tech as it has come to be defined in the marketplace, but it is an important bellwether. We now see that consumers are opening up to the idea of paying a decent amount of money for a piece of technology that is on display all the time. These are basic constructs that allow us to connect the dots and see that things are setting up nicely for people to embrace fashion tech.
Fashion tech is a pretty broad term. It can be related to how clothes are made, what they are made from, or how they behave and can result in everything from increased sustainability, improved heath, or enabling better expression of self. Adidas using seized gillnets to create shoes is just as much fashion tech as Rebecca Street’s motion-responsive light up dress.
Much like wearable devices, fashion tech is going to start small and grow. Garments produced utilizing technology that allows for repurposing and upcycling of discarded material are becoming more and more prevalent. Levi’s is working to repurpose discarded denim and Adidas’ gillnet sneakers are going on sale later this year. While the work being done will have a profound influence on the environment, few consumers will notice it. The next rung on the ladder will likely be specialized fashion tech. Similar to fitness trackers, products such as the biometric shirts from OMsignal and Hexoskin offer specialized capabilities and are easily embraced by a target audience. This small pond allows creators to explore the wearable space and develop improved sensors, test flexible circuitry, see how products wear, and work to reduce costs. All of this information will be used to improve future fashion tech garments. The next step, which we are on the verge of, is high tech apparel designed for the general public. With fashion giant Ralph Lauren introducing the first of what they state will be a line of connected appeal, it is clear we are on the cusp of big things. And all of this is occurring concurrently with tremendous strides being made in personal manufacturing. Technologies such as 3D printing and textile printing have the ability to cause changes on the scale of another industrial revolution, the tech just needs to get there.
Does this mean that next year people will be wearing dresses embedded with LEDs that can also monitor the wearer’s health? Probably not (though this dress is headed there). But you might see smaller, more discreet accessories embracing some of these concepts. It could be a handbag with integrated color-changing LEDs or belt with a pattern changing e-Ink display. Fashion tech is exciting because it opens so many doors, whether it is helping the Earth, solving horrendous labor issues, or simply allowing us to more vibrantly express ourselves (which, after all, is the whole purpose of fashion). Given how far things have come over the past year, we cannot wait to see the state of fashion tech in 12 months.
