Matt muses: Future fashion

Fashion’s job is to be one step ahead. Spring collections go on sale in the height of winter, meanwhile designers are furiously stitching up a vision for the winter yet to come. Perhaps carried away with the whole Back To The Future hoax this week, thoughts turned to how science fiction sometimes becomes science fact. Or not…

Communicating through tv screens. Check. Face transplants. Affirmative. Hoverboards. Not quite yet. Widespread adoption of white jumpsuits by all genders. Mercifully, no (that really will need another four centuries to catch on). Maybe the poor souls stuck in ivory all-in-ones find themselves in a post-industrial, digitalised age where life is streamlined, waste and excess are frowned upon and fashion has been demonised… eliminated, even.

As it turns out, fashion—like just about everything else—went the other way, dishing out more choice. It’s the age of the niche. Style has survived. But it does seem that the world grows evermore critical of the way things are created and consumed. So if not jumpsuits, how does the industry adapt?

By embracing fashion’s instinct to innovate.

Forward-thinking processes and textiles. Garments that incite desire in those who wear them and improve the lives of those who make them. What could be more cutting-edge?

It’s got nothing to do with science or scepticism. In a world of finite resoures, it’s just smart.

One thing it isn’t, is easy. But the potential is thrilling. More so than white jumpsuits.

Image courtesy of Kate Sylvester