Fashion Forward
The fashion industry is constantly changing, and we’re always on the lookout for the Next Big Thing. Well, it doesn’t get much bigger than these next few ideas—they’re the fashions of the future, and they could soon be coming to a place near you…
Home-grown fabrics. You may not think it possible to literally grow your own clothes (you know what they say about money growing on trees), but one designer is proving it wrong. Suzanne Lee is growing her own material in her workshop in London, using a concoction of green tea, sugar, yeast and bacteria to produce a material that’s a kind of vegetable leather. It takes around two weeks to grow then can either be folded around a mould or dried out and sewn the traditional way, with the downside being that it only lasts for around 5 years before hardening and rotting. But, it’s fully biodegradable which means it can be composted when no longer wearable and they’re working on ways to preserve it, and as it’s such an eco-friendly option there’s already been huge interest from the textile industry.
Engineered fashion. French designer Julien Fournie has taken the world of design to the next level—rather than sticking to a pencil and pad, he’s now using computer-aided designing and drafting technology (CADD) to sketch straight into 3D. Engineers created specialist software that could transform the way designers work, and it’s enabled Julien to do everything from find the right pressure to sew neoprene (very futuristic) to seeing how certain fabrics will drape without the need for expensive and time-consuming tests.
Magic Mirror. A new magic mirror is being designed which could drastically change the way shoppers decide what to buy. It’ll allow people to virtually see themselves in different outfits, taking exact body measurements to determine how clothes would look, cutting out the need for lengthy trying-on sessions and giving the high street a whole new level of fascination.
How’s that for fashion forward? It’s a whole new world out there, and we can’t wait to see what’s coming next.