Functional Clothing Lab presents a vision for a new fashion ecology, pairing shared global innovation with hyperlocal production and iteration.
This is their projection:
What if fashion would be more like science? At least the ‘functional fashion’ part of it. There would be no companies, only ‘Research and Design Institutes’ that would be sharing their findings with each other and building a database of practical solutions for clothing that would cover all the needs of humanity. Then, going deeper in my vision, there would be a global system of collecting the information about what clothing is needed, anybody would be able to create a ticket and AI would analyze and group them and present a list of tasks to those R&D institutes, which they would choose from and solve the given issue. First batch of samples would be sent to those who initially posted an issue, they’d approve or suggest adjustments to the solution, and so on until a highly functional product is created. Hope it doesn’t sounds all so practical and boring, the systematic approach to creation of what is really needed doesn’t exclude one of the most important functions of clothing - to look good. Even deeper, there would be local production centers in every city, if not neighborhood, like a Fabrication Lab, where any individual will be able to come and request any item from global catalogue to be made in her/his size and color preference. Humans with help of specialized machines and robots would assemble it. All the designs would be created with that specific production method in mind, so that to minimize the time needed and waste created. Parts of this vision are not so unrealistic and my path is headed towards the ones that dim possible. However I, as one person, can only do so much - talk to me if you want to join forces.