Trends based on the visionary ideas of fashion designers and presented at Fashion Week's runways... Here is the vision of the fashion world that might soon become a thing of the past. The creativity and inventiveness of designers will likely soon not go without the support of new technologies. What will the fashion of the future, which is being born before our eyes, look like?
Future Fashion, or the birth of Fashion-Tech
Most industries currently developing around the world are growing dynamically, mainly due to the support of new technologies. The fashion world for a long time seemed to be resilient to it, or at least existed and developed without their over-expansion. However, the fashion of the future is not just about new directions or trends in design, pattern making or materials - but most importantly about the market opening up to modern and advanced technological capabilities, such as those offered by the development of mobile devices, the Internet of Things, or the ubiquity of networks.
Fashion-Tech is a collaboration between fashion and new technologies, which goes far beyond such (now widely available) functionalities as buying clothes via an application or a virtual stylist. However, it's a fact that soon we will be looking into virtual closets more often than into our own, and the perfect styling will be composed by... a virtual mirror.
The brave new world of fashion - a response to the challenge of consumerism
Fashion houses, designers, and creators of the fashion world are increasingly aware of the exhaustion of the formula of so-called traditional fashion. Omnipresent consumerism, and the rapid spread of trends, make collections which until recently "reigned" in post-war fashion for the whole (several-month) season, now bore consumers after a significantly shorter time. Top fashion brands release up to 6-8 collections a year, which leads to changing the wardrobe every two months or even more often. The fashion of the future is technologies allowing to respond to consumers' needs even faster and more precisely - and what is most surprising, often without having to create real, physically existing clothes.
It turns out that many of our virtual desires do not have to (and will not) leave the digital world and materialize into a "traditional" piece of clothing. A virtual closet - a response to the ubiquitous excess - is a fulfilment for trend lovers and quick changes, and at the same time a chance to free the world from overconsumption, production and all the negative consequences brought about by the production of fast fashion. Here are three technologies that - properly used - can not only change the existing structure of the fashion industry, but also change our perception of fashion and become a step towards its conscious, sustainable consumption.
1. The Virtual Mirror, tell me...
... who is the best-dressed in the world? Soon, the vision of talking to a mirror will become not only quite probable, but also commonly observed - not only in modern showrooms, but also in large-scale boutiques of clothing chains. Digital mirrors, or virtual mirrors, are a combination of a shopping application, a virtual advisor, and... a way to bypass queues for the fitting room.
Equipped with artificial intelligence, the screen opens up access to the resources of a virtual closet. The application embedded in the smart mirror allows us to review the latest collection's clothes available in the showroom, "advises" in which of them we look best, and also matches the styling with the clothes we particularly liked. The virtual mirror processes the image of the person standing in front of it and allows fitting clothes to, for instance, one's skin type.
"Trying on clothes" is carried out using extremely realistic-looking filters and allows viewing a given piece of clothing not only from the front but also from the back or side. The first such virtual mirror was developed in 2015 by Samsung. A more modern version - H&M Voice Interactive Mirror - is currently being tested by H&M in one of its largest stores in the world, on Times Square in New York.
2. Digital Clothes - clothes that exist only online
The fashion of the future will not only care to satisfy our needs at the pace of rapidly changing trends. Changing the wardrobe several, or even a dozen (or more) times a year will not only be easy and attainable at the click of a smartphone, but also... extremely ecological. How is this possible? Virtual closets, or technologies under the label of digital clothes, convince us that less means more.
New, fashionable, perfectly personalized clothes will look great in pictures, which their recipients present on social media. The catch is that their existence is limited exclusively to the digital world. Digital clothes do not have their material counterparts in reality. They are merely filters that we will overlay on photos, choosing fashionable clothes from our own, personalized virtual closet. Sounds abstract? The first such virtual creation - a piece of work by the Danish brand The Fabricant - was auctioned off in May 2019 for a mere... $10,000!
3. Avatars on Instagram, or the new era of influencers
Since guessing influencers has become the norm (even a daily ritual) for people interested in the fashion world - it seems to us that nothing can shake the strong position of virtual world celebrities. Can someone (or something!) replace them?
The fashion of the future can do without influencers, at least those made of flesh and blood. Many indications suggest that in the near future they may be replaced by bot influencers. Humanoid robots - like @Lilmiquela - not only deceptively resemble humans, but also... catch up with trends much faster than they do. And clothes from brands like Prada or Chanel look just as good on them.
