Industrial Revolution Impact on Fashion Industry and Brand

LONDON, United Kingdom — In the 18th and 19th centuries, the starting time and second industrial revolutions harnessed water, steam and electrical power to mechanise the making of clothing, challenging the traditional system of craft-based production. In the mid-20th century, a third industrial revolution — in data technology and information analysis — radically changed the business concern of fashion again, giving rise to fast fashion giants similar Inditex and forcing the manufacture to rethink its 'broken' system for the historic period of Instagram.

Now, a fourth industrial revolution — powered by a constellation of new innovations beyond the concrete, digital and biological worlds, from 3D press and bogus intelligence to advances in biomaterials — is driving a new wave of change across the economic system, with major implications for fashion.

"Nosotros have however to grasp fully the speed and latitude of this new revolution. Consider the unlimited possibilities of having billions of people continued by mobile devices," Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the Globe Economic Forum (which chose the 4th industrial revolution equally the theme for its annual peak this yr) wrote in a book on the subject. "Call back virtually the staggering confluence of emerging technology breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Net of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, free energy storage and quantum computing."

The fourth industrial revolution will transform all industries. But fashion, in particular, stands to benefit most from advances in materials scientific discipline, opening upwards a broad range of new functional and aesthetic possibilities for garments.

BoF and style manufacture leaders explore what the fourth industrial revolution means for way at the VOICES New York event supported by QIC Global Existent Estate in June 2016.

"That's where this materials revolution is happening: we can offset to need interactivity from textiles and fibres themselves," explained Amanda Parkes, co-founder and principal of engineering and research at Manufacture NY, speaking at BoF's VOICES event at New York'southward Spring Studios in June. Some new fabrics will have calculating embedded into their fibres at the microscopic level, resulting in garments that can practice things like adapt to temperature changes or store energy similar a battery.

In the last few years, materials science has yielded breakthroughs like Shrilk, a transparent, compostable material made from discarded shrimp shells and proteins derived from silk, which is as potent equally aluminium merely one-half the weight. Qmilk, a new kind of thread made out of sour milk, is resistant to leaner and burn down. What's more than, power-generating and power-storing materials "exist already at the laboratory scale," says Aimee Rose, chief technology officeholder at the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America. "We've demonstrated we can create a fibre that stores energy and can act as a battery — merely how do nosotros get that into vesture?"

Getting these innovations out of labs and into the hands of consumers volition require collaboration between scientists, manufacturers and designers with a specific agreement of what consumers want and how these inventions tin deliver it. "How do we become the current tech wearables out of the easily of the technology people who accept no idea other than if I can't striking a billion people it's not going to happen — quote Marking Zuckerberg — but into the hands of people who are thinking virtually how to create this unique application?" asked Alan Marcus, caput of information, communication and technology agenda at the World Economic Forum.

"Thinking about the relationship effectually explicit functionality and the target audience you lot're going subsequently — that's what style companies are then good at," said Parkes, who predicts that the best companies volition take these innovations and create a product that is personalised to the specific needs of a niche audience.

While a engineering product like an iPhone can exist marketed to 70-year-old men and 14-year-former girls akin, fashion designers "have your woman or man that yous're designing for — and that human isn't everybody and that woman isn't everybody," says Todd Harple, manager of pathfinding and innovation strategy at Intel.

We have still to grasp fully the speed and breadth of this new revolution.

Also as giving birth to new consumer products, the technological innovations of the 4th industrial revolution take the potential to solve deeper systemic problems facing the fashion industry at big. For i, need for raw materials like leather already outstrips global supply, and climate change is exacerbating materials scarcity by depleting the environments needed to produce materials on which way businesses depend, such every bit cashmere and silk.

Co-ordinate to Suzanne Lee, chief creative officer of Mod Meadow, a New York-based start-up that's developing lab-grown leather (and other materials), biotechnology could aid. "The way that animals are intensively farmed means that the quality of the hides is dropping," she explained. "You've got more scars you need to cut around, so there's more than waste matter. There can be between 30 to 80 per centum wastage on 1 animate being hide. From an efficiency standpoint, from a manufacturing standpoint, that's a massive trouble."

Materials innovation "will assist us go along to ensure access and availability to the highest quality raw materials we rely on," added Marie-Claire Daveu, chief sustainability officer and caput of international institutional affairs at Kering, which launched an in-house innovation lab in 2014 to research and develop "greener" materials solutions.

Materials science could too reconcile growing consumer need for more products with the drive to clamp down on waste — in the The states lone, about ten.5 one thousand thousand tons of clothing are sent to landfills each yr. Researchers at the Massachusetts Plant of Technology are currently building a 3D printer that could print jewellery made from shrimp chitin (a waste material product). "Wear it for the summertime and at the end of the summer, throw information technology in the ocean and it dissolves in table salt h2o," suggested Parkes. "Market it every bit, 'This really will be gone in iii months, habiliment information technology now while you can.' It's what Snapchat is — it creates a buzz."

Indeed, 3D printing — the process of making a physical object past printing it layer by layer from a digital cartoon — could disrupt fashion's electric current manufacturing methods by enabling companies to quickly create complex products without specialist machinery. This could radically shorten the design-to-manufacturing cycle, meaning companies can examination more prototypes before rolling out a production or manufacture in a fashion that more than closely responds to demand.

As the toll of 3D printers and the materials they require continues to fall — the toll of the average 3D-printed object will drop by 50 percentage from 2013 to 2018 — producing products in modest quantities will become more price-effective, paving the mode for more customisation in manner. Already, brands like Adidas and Nike are using 3D press to enable shoppers to customise the way their shoes fit.

Artificial intelligence will likewise play a key role in the fourth industrial revolution, by automating functions currently performed by people, radically altering industries from transportation to healthcare to finance. In a trend-driven industry similar mode, the ability to quickly make complex data-driven decisions could help companies predict whether a new production will get a bestseller, or how long a tendency volition final.

By analysing big amounts of data — such as customers' online purchasing histories, social media trends and potentially even data gathered from new "smart garments" — AI could assistance designers predict what customers demand and want from new mode products. Furthermore, AI could use data from stores and due east-commerce platforms to assistance retailers more accurately align supply and demand — thus reducing waste and retrieving lost sales.

Innovative way products could also solve problems in other industries, such as health — an surface area already beingness targeted by wearables like Fitbit and the Apple Lookout. Terminal year, Intel partnered with Chromat, a New York label known for costuming stars including Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, to create a apparel with an outer frame that inverse its appearance in response to factors like the wearer'south breathing, sweat and torso temperature. According to Todd Harple, this opens upward a whole new conversation around wear and wellness: "If I accept my female parent and she's elderly, I want to know when she'south afraid or anxious — how might I do that without beingness bothersome? Or if I accept a child that I'm providing care for who has autism, wouldn't I similar to know when he'due south focused or not? These are all possible through the garments," he said.

Equally for how long it volition take for consumers to feel the affect of these breakthroughs, "You lot're assuming there'due south going to exist this large 'killer app' — that's the language of applied science, and I don't believe that that's necessarily going to happen. I call back slowly nosotros'll start to meet these things slip into the things we do daily," predicted Harple. Indeed, the fourth industrial revolution will yield new systems — which link up article of clothing with the body, its environs and other technology devices — rather than singular 'killer' inventions.

But barriers remain — especially in the style industry. "One is mindset, which is, 'Nosotros don't need it, everything's fine.' That's definitely changing," said Suzanne Lee, who moved from working at a way company to Modern Meadow. "There is no R&D and innovation in fashion," she added, pointing to Cyberspace-a-Porter'southward early on struggles to convince luxury brands to sell online every bit an example of the conservative nature of the industry. "Some brands are merely lazy. They desire to await for someone else to become do information technology, or they're just looking to apply something as a quick marketing ploy."

The speed at which fashion companies churn out new products — and the resulting short-term, trend-driven mindset of many in the industry — is another major hurdle. In biotechnology, the timeline to develop an thought and take it to marketplace tin be eight to 15 years. "Manner doesn't really have a history within of its corporations of having R&D that goes two, 5, 10 years out," said Parkes.

"There's a disconnect betwixt the vision for what we're doing and the expectation of when it'southward going to happen," added Lee. "I see this as a field of materials that really are going to evolve over the coming years and decades… In terms of taking a multi-year, complex science projection and putting fashion money behind information technology, I can't call back of many examples of brands that can beget to do that."

The Revolutionary Fibres and Textiles Manufacturing Institute, a individual-public partnership in the US, has earmarked $300 one thousand thousand for grants for organisations working with new materials. According to Parkes, who is involved with the projection, "we quite frankly want more fashion companies." Designers need to be having conversations with technologists, and answering questions scientists have — even basic things similar, if nosotros put this fibre in your knitting machine, will it break? "We want y'all to be thinking more near the integration of fabric applied science much more than into owning your own supply chain around your yarns, fibres and textiles," said Parkes.

Some partnerships between fashion and engineering science businesses are already springing upward. Before this year, Levi's released a jacket in collaboration with Google, which had Google's Project Jacquard technology woven into the textile, so that the wearer tin can control their telephone by touching the sleeve. "Google was essential in helping us merge the gap between the denim industry and the digital world," Paul Dillinger, vice president of global product innovation at Levi Strauss & Co., told BoF.

The technological shifts of the fourth industrial revolution will also throw up new challenges around design protections, security and ethics. 3D printing, by giving companies the tools to manufacture products chop-chop and cheaply, could make it even more hard for luxury companies to protect their designs and finish knock-offs flooding the market place.

"I think there'southward a lot of things that need to be tackled with regards to how we care for patents and intellectual belongings in this infinite," said Harple. "I could pull on a sweater that has solar [panels] on it that'southward charging my phone — how do I patent that? Is that a garment?"

Garments that track the physical and emotional state of the wearer could provide companies with invaluable data well-nigh their consumers, merely likewise raise issues around privacy and security. When developing new products, upstanding questions like these need to be "master features, rather than a potential issues," said Marcus of the World Economic Forum. "Dissimilar governments are reacting in different ways to the ethics of some of these things… From a competitiveness standpoint, the style industry needs to exist at the tabular array in those conversations."

Editor's Annotation: This article was revised on 22 August, 2016. An earlier version of this commodity misstated that Suzanne Lee's title is creative director of Modern Meadow. Her correct title is master creative officer.

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[Amanda Parkes on Why Wearable Tech is About More than Gadgets ]

[Is Mode Ready for the AI Revolution? ]

[The Robot Opportunity ]

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To learn more than about VOICES, BoF's new annual gathering for big thinkers, visit our VOICES website, where you can find all the details and employ to attend our invitation-merely global gathering in December, in partnership with QIC Global Real Estate, hosted at the Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire in the picturesque English countryside, one hr from London.

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