To operate in a Future making Mindset Think In Systems Not Trends

Innovators tend to see the world from a big-picture perspective, bypassing incremental progress to reimagine possibilities across industries and society.

Today cultural pop-up trends such as micro aesthetics matter, as we seek to decode the shifting sands of fashion culture. How fashion identity and desires propagate will never cease to captivate audiences. But Fashion trend discourse has become encumbered with what I coined in 2021 the Hypercycle with its follow up handbook in navigating a post trend world in collaboration with Gung Ho.

The fashion futures space caters to the media’s hunger for hot trend takes in an effort to capture more audiences. But we don’t counterbalance this enough with discourse around fashion as an infrastructure system designed to turn our desires into goods. The aesthetics conversation lacks a discussion on new tangible systems and flows that breed new fashion culture.

Industry and culture are interdependent.

In obsessing over micro trends and fleeting moments, fashion Cultural producers and mythmakers (see lexicon below), have failed to capture the heart of creative and sustainable fashion progress:

How, where and by who a garment, accessory or other style industry product will be made in the future says more about the future than the next micro trend. 

This speaks to:

• how we will interact with fashion as a key need and pleasure principle.

• future fashion jobs and their benefits.

• how we will spend money and where.

• how we will trade locally and internationally.

• utilise/ honour natural resources.

• how we will exchange as communities and with brands.

Quick lexicon

• Fashion infrastructure systems: a global economic and industrial complex from raw material extraction, sourcing to manufacturing, design, packaging, shipping all the way to last mile delivery, brick and mortar and digital retail.

• Cultural producers and mythmakers: the tentacular world of people and organisations shaping ‘future fashion trend’ discourse ranging from agencies to consultants, forecasters, strategists to media, journalists and influencers.

• Future Humanity Systems: This is a terminology I have created referring to the idea of being a Regenerative Futures Architect. Future Humanity systems within that remit aim to transform culture, identity and technology in the age of regeneration.

Radical visions of the future of fashion, if met with a strategic grasp of systems, will be unstoppable

What if the understanding of fashion culture were paired with the understanding of how goods are made and their underlying infrastructure?

As cultural producers and mythmakers, we need to immerse ourselves in culture - yes.

But do we know enough about infrastructure and manufacturing? Is this the missing link to connecting with the reality of what the people and our planet truly need from fashion? Or is this where the fashion industry will go to die? Perhaps reality is not trending enough. Supply chains, let’s face it, not a ‘sexy’ topic.

I used to be a fashion designer, regularly working in factories, travelling several weeks a year for product development. In the early 2010s I moved into future fashion foresight.

Today I am going back to that playbook as a futurist, in order to combine my big ideas on culture, fashion and humanity’s future with actionable strategies that understand infrastructure and systems.

Making Goods and the future of fashion’s infrastructure is the most pressing cultural conversation

And it is a conversation that spans tech, biotech, wellbeing, policy, urban planning, retail and ancient wisdoms to name a few. We’ve covered recycling, resale, repair and biomaterials as the outer layer of the onion. But there are many more layers and the deeper you go the more your eyes cry. But the payoff is usually delicious. Excuse the food analogy but the fact is that in sustainable fashion trend coverage, we are just scratching the surface. 90% of a garment's emissions happens at the sourcing and manufacturing stage. Repair, rental and recycle matter, but they are just a dent, and at times a distraction, even worse, an excuse.

The fashion organisations who will ultimately be remembered by future generations are the ones that committed to the mess of fixing our broken system and ‘staying with the Trouble’.

The Connective tissue of fashion’s relevance is infrastructure. It no longer is culture

The Operating System of what matters in the fashion cultural conversation needs a reboot.

We should be always asking ourselves:

What creates the most palpable change in people’s everyday livelihoods, our planetary ecosystems and resources?

The fashion organisations with the real power to drive this type of change are:

• The manufacturers, suppliers and next-gen material innovators.

• And of course, the brands and designers who then invest in them.

We must realise this as Fashion is at high risk of losing relevance.

Fashion as an industry doesn’t get airtime in the largest cultural events and moments in foresight and innovation. Amy Webb, CEO of the Future Today Institute and professor at NYU Stern School of Business, in her lauded SXSW annual emerging tech presentation does not list the Fashion Industry in her roundup of Impact of Trends on your Industry. It’s like we don’t exist. We’re mentioned sparsely in relation to AI and Biotech.  

Yet according to Fashion United’s 2022 statistics roundup the Fashion Industry drives a significant part of the global economy. “If it were ranked alongside individual countries’ GDP the global fashion industry would represent the seventh-largest economy in the world” according to McKinsey’s State of Fashion 2017 report.

What is our measure of true influence, if we are not even a blip on the radar of the most attended future foresight talk at SXSW, if not one of the most anticipated in the world?

The creative and fashion industry are not seen as a whole industrial complex that matters. Yet we do.

We fuel global trade, labour, manufacturing, agriculture, news, culture, innovation, retail, logistics, wellbeing, sports and more. As such we are one of the largest polluting industries in the world. The richest man in the world is a fashion magnate.

Fashion is one of Steward Brand’s 6 Pace Layers for a society to function cohesively because it is so closely related to commerce and infrastructure.

We have been very distracted, more focused on the hype around fashion, and a stereotype that we’re just good for aesthetics. We failed to realise our Infrastructural/ Industrial clout is equal to our Cultural clout.

By ignoring Fashion infrastructure systems as a ‘priority topic’ in the fashion media, fashion ever increasingly, like a series of micro aggressions, ceases to truly matter and plunges into irrelevance, because the focus is not on systemic change.

The result is that the style industry is not being taken seriously as a powerful industrial and economic complex, in terms of its impact on global economic infrastructure, policy and innovation.

In a recent report, the Fashion Roundtable highlighted the King's Speech which delivered the UK’s legislative agenda for economic stability, social justice, and national renewal. According to the Fashion Roundtable, Fashion is the UK's most economically significant creative sector, supporting 1.3 million jobs across the country and generating approximately £60 billion annually (nearly half of the total economic impact from the UK's creative industries). However, the plans laid out never addressed the Fashion and creative sector, and focused on the importance of Artificial Intelligence.

Fashion, even though we all need clothing on our backs and economic figures show how we support national interests, does not have a seat at the table.

The good news

There has been a growing groundswell of innovators hard at work. The Fashion infrastructure systems is innovating left and right.  

Some nations are taking charge in legislation. Tradeshows such as ​Source​, the ​Future Fabrics Expo​ and ​Premiere Vision​ are leading the way. The Think Tank ​the Fashion Roundtable​ has been a pioneer, Aude Penouty of ​Entada Textile​ and ​Paul Foulkes Arellano​ whose new ​Materials & Sustainability​ with ​Julia L Freer Goldstein​ will be an invaluable tool for educators and innovators. I have also found ​Jane Penty​’s Product Design and Sustainability Strategies, tools and practices a great book I’ve gone back to over the years.

We have some amazing sustainability journalism coming from the likes of ​Brooke Roberts Islam​, ​Rachel Arthur​ and ​Megan Doyle​. When it comes to reimagining manufacturing ​PCH Innovations​, ​Natural Fiber Welding​, ​Atacac​, ​DecodeDecode​, are some of the many organisations that have been leading the way. 

Even though Renewcell’s bankruptcy shook sustainable manufacturing, much progress is still being made. Biomimicry is now entering the mainstream after decades of the Biomimicry Institute’s ​Ray of Hope Prize​.

Compared to a decade ago, there are tangible building blocks for a no-waste and regenerative fashion future. Investment in next-gen materials reached over $3 billion USD according to ​Material Innovation’s 2023 report.

The Impact of Fashion Infrastructure Systems on Future Humanity Systems

‘Making Good(s)’ touches on a web of human life, from city shops to farming to raw materials to labour, from design to technology to what we wear on our backs and how all of this seeps into our ecosystems, from our bodies to our planet. It’s-a-lot.

The fashion supply chain, manufacturing and factories address the interconnected needs of people, communities, culture, businesses, and the planet. This is why the fashion systems infrastructure is the surest way to transform fashion into the regenerative fuel for life it can be in service of Future Humanity Systems.

As cultural producers and as I’ve said before ‘mythmakers’, we shape cultural perception and moeurs. What we direct people towards has a direct impact on humanity and the systems we deem ‘normal’ to live in.

It is through culture and information, that people learn to feel safe enough to welcome the future into their everyday.

With that in mind, how we can show the world how transformational new fashion infrastructure systems could be for our communities, workforce, environment, technology, and economies?

Stay tuned for my upcoming 3 macro trends for this first Future Humanity Systems series called ‘Making Good(s)’:

1. I Trust You Systems

2. Agency of Governing Interspecies

3. Human Transition Industries

If you have made it this far thank you. I appreciate your attention, a scarce resource these days. As always, I hope to serve your work and mission in any way, big or small. Say hello at hello@geraldinewharry.com I am always inspired by your messages.

By Geraldine Wharry

This article was originally posted on April 19th 2024. Check out its sister newsletter here to read the original.