Designing with AI, The Future of Fashion is circular, A generation sick of being sold perfection and Upcycled Fashion as healing
Artwork by Geraldine Wharry
As a fashion futurist, I explore what tomorrow means all day long. And I get to write about it for Spur Magazine in a monthly column. Today I am taking you behind the scenes of writing my column which is usually published in Japanese.
The Tomorrow column comes out in print in Japan and reflects my shared interests with the Spur team and my editor Mari Fukuda. The mission of the column is to explore the possible tomorrows of the Fashion World.
Every month we exchange ideas on a topic that is either long term or very relevant to the cultural zeitgeist. I send ideas to my editor and we brainstorm for a bit. Then it’s time to pounce, write on a future defining topic concisely but impact-fully.
Writing a trend report in 900 words, once a month, is a great exercise any futurist should try, even if it is for your own publication.
Here is an edited transcript of the columns published between October 2022 and February 2023 on key defining topics:
Designing with AI
The Future of Fashion is circular
A generation sick of being sold perfection
Upcycled Fashion as healing
Designing with AI
Artificial intelligence has fuelled the fields of computers and robotics for many years but is now taking the creative industry by storm. As a tool for creatives, it is not new. But the most recent generation of AI platforms, especially DALL·E and Midjourney are coming closer than ever to replacing parts of the design process we have always deemed only humans could carry out. And it has not taken many years for this to happen so imagine what will be next in a few years.
The images created by Dall-E and Midjourney are astounding, and speed is a major draw. Something that may take an agency or artist months to produce may take an AI 60 seconds. Artist, designer, and AI expert Sebastian Errazuriz DalleFuture predicts illustrators will be the first ones ‘replaced’ by artificial intelligence. If that is the case, what about fashion design and illustration?
John Mauriello in his comprehensive Design Theory video Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity? shares he was able to create 400 sneaker concepts in 2 hours using DALL-E, describing the experience as so powerful he was not being able to sleep
‘like the lightbulb had just been turned on’.
Where we land today and in the future is that collaborating on projects with an AI allows for new discoveries. This has captured the imagination and fascination of leading artists, designers, and fashion houses, including The Fabricant with their Deep fashion collection a few years back. A creative renaissance with new creative hybrid profiles such as Computational Designer, Architect Fashion & Interactive Designer Behnaz Farahi. In the artist/ beauty/ fashion space is data scientist Rovai Fabio who has worked on fashion designs for a Gap and Dazed collaboration.
Artists such as Crosslucid explore queering futures and poetic AI, pushing the boundaries of human faces, the body and gender whilst Refik Anadol embeds media arts into architecture with data and machine intelligence for public art, data sculpture and paintings. AI-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist whom I interviewed for Dazed Beauty. Her work leads us to question how we can manage the power and risks of new technologies.
AI such as DALL-E have access to all human recorded history, a catalogue of cultural, historical, and artistic movements. When it comes to originality, the issue is the loss of creativity if we all work from the same data set. Designers who are serious about AI, as well as maintaining their uniqueness, will have their own set of images they feed to the AI. Based on the capabilities of AI tools now being used in design, there might be the same amount of people in a design studio, but the talent may be reallocated with, for example, engineers focused on prompts and designers focused on database curation.
Innovation is our responsibility, and it will take ingenuity from the creative fields to understand the unprecedented risks and opportunities. But humans and AI are now working hand-in-hand, and this will change our understanding of how intelligence and creativity work, and ultimately what makes humans unique.
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@mauriellodesign 's Design Theory video Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity
The Future of Fashion is circular
The ‘green fashion industry will reach a market value of $ 8.5 billion by 2023. Circular fashion is the marriage of the “circular economy” with sustainable and ethical fashion. With an estimated 100 billion pieces of clothing produced each year and less than 1% being recycled into new clothing, the current linear structure of the fashion industry is unsustainable. The UN’s weather agency said greenhouse gas emissions hit record highs in 2021. The World Meteorological Organization predicts emissions will increase by 10.6% by 2030.
Circular fashion is making noise because the fashion industry has realised it must transition to an entirely new economic model: from a linear take-make-waste system to a cradle-to-cradle system. In October 2022 I moderated a panel at the Conscious festival created by Green is the new black in collaboration with The Mills Fabrica focused on circular fashion as the future, with panelists:
Industrial Designer Alexander Taylor created Prime Knit, a knitted sneaker upper, one of the most sustainable and innovative products ever produced by Adidas. He also created the Parley for the Oceans shoe upper, made entirely of recycled ocean plastic and gillnets.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano is the Founder of Circuthon, a consulting agency working with businesses, guiding them through the changing legislative environment and enabling them to embed circularity into their products and operations.
Felix Winckler is the co-Founder and CCO of Reflaunt, the widest distribution network for pre-loved luxury and powers the resale journey for businesses such as Balenciaga, Mr Porter, The Outnet, Gianni, Net A porter & Harvey Nichols.
Wajahat Hussain and Richard Toon are the founders and creators of Bio Restore - a home laundry “Re-Tergent” and innovative technology that renews, revives, and restores old, worn clothing to new.
Not present at the panel I hosted but equally notable, the Alterist, is disrupting the fashion industry with its community of 68 designers, showcasing over 500 upcycled garments in their marketplace. What will also help circularity spread into the mainstream is digitization where fasion items and brand behaviours can be traceable, transparent. Augmented reality, virtual prototyping and try-ons can also enable waste reduction and lower shipping emissions. Producing regionally and with an understanding of local biodiversity and soil health will also be a key factor.
Ingenuity and creativity has never been more important. The global economy is stuttering, our planet is suffering. To think we have a choice in the matter would be a big mistake. Here are some key principles for brands and citizens:
Degrow the use of materials when producing individual items
Remove nonrecyclable and polluting materials from the supply chain
Recapture everything from garment offcuts to packaging for reuse
Return any unavoidable waste to nature safely
Ensure use and reuse for as long as possible including collection schemes and bringing the recycled materials back to a “good as new” state.
Be accountable for the overall lifecycle of your belongings
Make zero harm to people, animals and eco systems
Live by the five r’s of fashion – Reduce – Repair – Recycle – Reuse - Resell
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A generation sick of being sold perfection
In a globalized and hyper-connected society, we are creating new common myths around beauty, what is considered ‘normal’, attractive’ and perfect. This reflects generation that is sick of being sold perfection in the fashion and beauty world. There has been a rebellion against traditional beauty standards, and the binary way we look at beauty. In the new ‘beauty’ story we are authoring, emotions and being truthful to oneself are the pillars. Influencers, brands, end users are conjointly taking matters in their own hands to redefine the codes of perfection, and sick of performativism.
Many of us are tired of social media, all too aware of its connections with the society-wide rise of anxiety and issues such as body dysmorphia. This was central to a Dove campaign Toxic Influence and ‘Detox your feed’, using deepfakes to expose toxic beauty advice on social media. A recent TikTok trend exposed the unrealistic ideals of beauty filters, celebrating people’s natural beauty, dubbed the healthiest trend on the app, set to the lyrics “The songs on the radio are okay/ But my taste in music is your face” from “Tear in My Heart” by Twenty-One Pilots.
Anti-perfection is also reaching heightened levels with what is now called ‘Absurdist aesthetics’, a direct product of GenZ’s affinity for memes. Avavav creative director Beate Karlsson, known for her memeable designs and signature monster feet shoes, shared recently for Vogue that she wanted to expose the absurdity and irony of fashion’s fixation on status and wealth. Whatever we used to consider ugly and almost circus like is now being celebrated. Circus is a beauty publication that celebrates the absurdity and playground that can be beauty. Dazed Beauty referred to the magazine as a “beauty platform for total weirdos”.
What is sure is that the performative nature of social media and the culture it has created has started to feel like a scam we participate in. A recent 032s piece by Daniel Moldoveanu ‘The Ethical Scammer’ breaks it down:
“The world increasingly requires us to micro-scam others for the sole purpose of getting by.”
There is an elastic reaction to this that has been brewing under the surface for years but is reaching a wider adoption now. The mask is off, and these structures are crumbling both figurately and literally, as we can see from recent news of Twitter and Facebook’s demise. People are seeking truthful exchanges with organisations, businesses, with each other and tired of performing for the gram. The message is: why do you care so much? Stop scamming, stop pretending, be yourself.
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Upcycled Fashion as healing
For millennia humans have been repairing their wears out of necessity. The perception of upcycling and repair as a fashion trend coined ‘DIY’ is very recent. Started before the pandemic, upcycling fashion is also a biproduct of climate change action, seen as a philosophy and an act of defiance.
For regions such as Africa and other parts of the Global South, upcycling and repair are a necessity and fast fashion comes in the tons of discarded clothing arriving at markets as Liz Ricketts, founder of the Or Foundation stated for Atmos magazine:
“The truth is that most of what ends up in Kantamanto is donated simply because fast fashion requires turn over, not attachment. Fast fashion isn’t made to be loved, to be kept, to be cared for. “
There has been a hope that returning to repair may be a healing process. We are reconciling with a rich legacy, from the sewing and textile skills of our grandparents, to repair techniques such as Boro denim in Japan, to the quilts of Gees Bend in Alabama. There is a long and shared story of resilience, craft, and creativity we have neglected.
The Somerset House exhibition “Eternally Yours” showcased diverse examples of creative reuse, seeking to unpack how ‘repair’ can guide healing. Concurrently the State of Fashion Biennial “Ways of caring” created a community experience with artists, makers, and the public working together on the broken relationship between the production of fashion and the wearer.
Nicole McLaughlin, known for her upcycled streetwear, shows that anything can be repurposed with a daily practice of curiosity for everyday objects. Atelier & Repairs state in their manifesto “waste less. Reimagine more. Our purpose is to lead the movement of excess […] by responsibly connecting creativity with sustainability.”
The additional consensus is that garments should be made to last. The Centre for Circular Design created the Service shirt to last 50 years. The right to repair movement is gaining traction with the European Right to Repair Campaign was launched in 2019. Fixing Fashion states “Fashion is broken, let's fix it together” and provides tutorials on how to repair and upgrade clothes. Meanwhile Levis opened Levis Haus in London offering repair, upcycling and recycling service.
This signals an alternative eco system for fashion manufacturing. Design for disassembly is breaking new ground. French brand Hodei produces de-constructible shoes. Modularity can raise the likelihood of designs being reused, with replacement of parts rather than having to retire whole items. Nike recently introducing their ISPA Link model which can be taken apart.
To conclude, the act of care and repair as healing itself plays out in a multitude of ways and enriches our lives. Of course, the desire for the new is hard wired in us but it is more a desire for what is different. If we chose to shift our gaze, we slow down and see unique beauty, even in the things we thought were broken.
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| Written and edited by Geraldine Wharry
Thank you Spur Magazine and my editor Mari Fukuda for all of your work making my monthly Futuring column possible and delivering it to readers in Japan and around the world. I appreciate you giving me the green light to share with you these future explorations in English.