Initially the article’s subject was to be about the state of technology in our lives and how its presence has magnified immensely compared to the previous decade. However, technology has always been a factor of our evolution. Each year we marvel at the newest innovation or concept and how it moves us forward or impacts our traditions; sometimes it augments them and sometimes it revolutionizes our lifestyle. And fashion finds a way to represent this transformation at every turn for our clothing is our expression of our mindset in combination with our environment.
In some years the change is small or negligible, and in some years it is immense. But nobody, especially those born in the 20th century, could ever quite detail the immense changes that have manifested in our culture today. The arrival of the computer and internet into mainstream society has transformed our lives and is serving as the foundation of the 21st century.
If the last century allowed us to be nocturnal, to connect with more people intimately, and increase choices and experiences, this one magnifies the possibilities of what we can do and who we can be. Not only is the knowledge of the world at our fingertips in real time, but we also have progressed to the power of consensus. This means we not only can receive opinion but can also collaborate on large scales without having to physically amass elements together in one place. We can solicit and accumulate funds to initiate projects, access programs to better manage our resources and enjoy channels towards actualization once limited to those with better means.
Furthermore, the system allows for better autonomy to support individual actions while simultaneously catering to homogenized tastes, and thus has potential to radically transform traditions in various industries. And if there is any industry that is sensitive to change, it is the fashion industry. For instance, fashion editors have realized that the landscape for showing collections no longer needs to be neither within physical confines nor within organized calendars, especially as fast fashion has opened the doors to ongoing production versus segmented presentation.
As well, emerging talent no longer has to follow once-established structures to be part of the industry. They can garner attention through self-directed PR efforts through social media, form relationships with independent media channels such as bloggers, and present their collections online through live-streaming or easily accessible video hosting sites such as the ever-popular YouTube.
The collaborative landscape can also hold a double-edge sword as the advent of social media puts designers (and subsequently the public) in a creative bind. With popular opinion and approval being more directly sought, designers have unwittingly had to sacrifice a degree of individuality in their processes as recent collections can attest.
The immediacy of such broad influential interaction is unwittingly placing designers in a precarious position where the drive to remain successfully competitive, so hinged on the access and attention to such broad-based and immediately expressed needs, has resulted in increased homogeneity of the collections. It’s as if the checklist of requisite trend items has become more mechanical. The danger is that, if every house produces the same items they may put each other out of business, especially as fast fashion houses, more able to easily turn out copies in rapid succession, undercut their competition.
Contrasting this is the capacity to customize items in production. The bespoke movement over the last few years to offer well-made quality garments opened the door to individual tailoring that was once exclusive to high-end clients. More recently, 3D printing has not only brought an immediacy to manufacturing that is harmonious with other aspects of our culture under technology’s presence, but more so provides the possibility of incorporating customization at the manufacturing level for a wider range of products that normally wouldn’t be possible without a sizeable budget. The possibilities of this are more dynamic, as it allows design influence to come from the masses and reach in a more immediate manner, allowing innovators to share the stage with more established experts and thus impact fashion and our broader cultural expression.
The instantaneous nature of our social media plus the easily accessible and real-time manufacturing landscape are setting us up for a new world that do more than break traditions. It will create a cultural dichotomy where one will have the impact on many, and many will define the individual. It is then only a matter of time before we realize the concept of trends as we know it will be outmoded and will take on a new way of expression that balances the immediacy with frequency of output. Perhaps it is this new approach to how we think that will need to be sorted out in order to help us define who we are and consequently what we wear to express this in the coming century. It will take someone with fresh eyes unconnected to everything that has been to break from past conventions and successfully create under these new emerging conditions. It certainly happened last century.