The r/evolution of the fashion industry in the Digital Age.
The “Magic” of tech fused with the “Beauty” of fashion to promote the “Wellness” of healthcare.
Part one:
Real time physiological feedback in clothing will revolutionize health care.
Major Point: Industry is evolving our environment faster than our brain is evolving. In the developed nations food is plentiful and we do not have to exert much activity to have access to vast quantities. The intelligence which should have evolved in our brain must be moved to the technology we wear to counterbalance this effect.
Samsung Health gets it …
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Part two:
Fashion has centered around visual aspects, such as color, silhouette, and fabric as the main focus. It has mainly been driven by personal expression and social meaning. Now it will add technology.
Major Point: Just like the main purpose of the mobile phone is no longer to make phone calls. The main purpose of clothing will not only be for covering the body, aesthetics, personal statements and status symbols, but will now add technical functionality (health, social, protection etc …).
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Part three:
Teaching fashion, tech and health as one integrated course.
Major Point: If the technology works perfect but is ugly, no one will use it. If the technology is somewhat flawed but is aesthetically gorgeous people will forgive you. Never underestimate the importance of attractiveness. We need a synergistic curriculum to meet the demands of this new field.
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In this article we will explore the r/evolution of the fashion industry in the Digital Age. We start by examining the “need” for wearable technology. We could discuss how wearable technology can help make people more social, safer, better informed, and even more attractive. We could explore any of these needs but we will focus on one need which is fueled by the current healthcare crisis. Everything from childhood obesity to diabetes is on the increase. This is compounded by a healthcare system that only intervenes after someone becomes sick and does not focus on keeping people healthy (although the cost of prevention is far lower than the cost of treatment).
This exact problem was illustrated by a former US CTO talking about the aging population and the role of technology by focusing on the pharmaceuticals and hospitals. But the best course for the impending national health crisis is to put the “health” back into health care. We need to work to steer public policy away from medications and hospitals and towards exercise and healthy living. This “broken” system might be explained by the fact that hospitals and pharmaceuticals do not make money from preventing sickness? Compounding the problem, not only do drugs make lots of money but people would rather take a pill then go for a mile run.
By contrast when the authors were asked which pharmaceutical has done the most for US health care. After thinking long and hard … Genentech, Alza, Pfizer, J&J … all the various drugs each had made. The answer was fitness & sports apparel companies! This is because the researchers at UCSF medical school have shown that heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc … can all be prevented, managed and sometimes cured with exercise, yoga (stress reduction) and diet. The modern healthcare system can no longer be focused only on curing the sick, it must make the shift to helping keep people healthy. And not only is prevention important but also early detection. The earlier you can detect a problem the less pain and cost will be incurred.
“America Needs a Health Care System, Not a Sick Care System.” — Bill George
→ Industry is evolving our environment faster than our brain is evolving. In the developed nations food is plentiful and we do not have to exert much activity to have access to vast quantities. The intelligence which should have evolved in our brain must be moved to the technology we wear to counterbalance this effect.
Technology is changing the face of everything. From self-driving cars to robotic surgical systems, technology is transforming our world. In this new digital age everything around us is being enhanced by technology. Even the individual person is altered by technology. Today people are walking around with a cloud connected supercomputer (smartphone) in their pocket with Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors that can gather a vast array of different types of information. If we consider a typical smartphone’s MEMS, with features to see (camera), hear (mic) and sense motion (accelerometer), it has capabilities to take real time biological measurement (sleep, nutrition, fitness and health) and transform diagnostics in healthcare.
In light of this personal technological profile, wearables can be extremely inexpensive and very powerful by utilizing the smartphone and a simple BLE link. These systems will consist of BioMEMS sensors (powered by piezoelectric) connected to the body to gather physiological data. A Bluetooth Smart (BLE) link will transfer data to the smartphone for real time processing. Then transmit to the cloud the relevant information needed by the healthcare provider.
These mobile smart devices will change healthcare because of the advent of always-on, always-connected, intelligent, ubiquitous devices that will monitor patient health data and publish it to a health care provider 24/7. Wearable technology will lead this revolution in healthcare promising dramatic improvements in diagnosis and care as well as unprecedented secure sharing of medical information among physicians, patients and others. Facilitating a reduction of the cost of health care as a whole and ushering in the new era of personalized medicine. Using wearable technology will help people make better decisions about their health.
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
― H. James Harrington
Allowing a comprehensive view of all the vital signs of the wearer, wearable technology will allow people to make far more informed decisions about the choices they make and how it affects their lives. An example of this is when Switzerland’s Sensimed AG and STMicroelectronics partnered to develop a smart contact lens called Triggerfish. It can diagnose, monitor and control intraocular pressure levels for patients and continuously report issues of glaucoma to the primary physician. This is just a small example of how new nanotech and MEMS devices are altering the future of healthcare with wearables.
Wearables can even make the current pharmaceutical drugs we use more efficient. Personalized genetics profiles can be mashed up with drug data and real time exercise/nutrition information to track and analyze real-time physiological changes. The ADME/Tox response of a drug can be correlated to sleep, exercise and diet. This type of deep rich view into daily activity could provide a new understanding of how the body processes drugs in different circumstances.
This new paradigm promises dramatic improvements in diagnostics, care, and will expand beyond hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices and become part of people’s everyday health monitoring and even self-diagnosis using Artificial Intelligent Medical Systems.
In order for these devices to be able to assure constant monitoring it is necessary for them to be in close contact with the person, ideally being worn 24/7 on the body. This brings us to the field of clothing and fashion where we need to understand the particularities of this industry, for an effective collaboration between the two. New ecosystems should be created to design, produce, promote and market wearables.
Existing as long as humanity, being dressed is a basic need for human beings, of the same importance as food and shelter. For centuries clothing had social meaning, visually distinguishing kings, priests, warriors, indicating belonging to a social class or a subculture.
Unless it’s a uniform, the choice of clothing is always an individual, often emotional affair. People have preferences for colors and materials, these choices being conditioned by numerous demographic factors (age, gender, geographic location, culture etc.). These attributes of fashion products should be taken in consideration and never ignored by producers of wearable tech.
The contemporary fashion industry is a result of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s. Nowadays it’s a field at the border of art, economics and industry, featuring the issues and advantages of all three areas. Over the last 60–70 years it has elaborated rules and business practices, a rhythm of seasons, such as showing the collections to the press and wholesale buyers during fashion weeks several months before the products get to stores. When launching a new wearable tech garment, the manufacturers should have an idea of these practices in order to successfully reach the final consumer of fashion products. However these practices are drastically changing now due to the explosion of social media such as Instagram: the collections are now visible to the consumer immediately after or even during the fashion shows, in real time, while the actual garments will only be available in stores months later.
Wearable tech clothing companies need to be aware of these changes in the rules of the game. They could also take advantage of these changes, and play by new rules, using the new sale channels, such as crowdfunding platforms, for pre-tailing the wearable tech products.
The fashion industry’s current problems also include an excessive production of clothing garments, and therefore a necessity to recycle and reuse them. On a long term basis, wearable tech products would be more sustainable if they succeed in being at once timeless classics and customizable trendy.
While fashion always was inspired by the tech industry and futurist trends, the rapprochement between two fields in the form of wearable tech devices started around 2007, when the Quantified Self movement emerged and the first health and fitness trackers appeared. They were mainly produced by tech companies, and designed by industrial designers. The most ambitious attempt to enter the field of consumer goods people would be ready to put on their faces was the Google Glass project. Touching too many sensible points in both esthetics and ethics, it eventually failed despite a late collaboration first with fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg and then with Luxottica, the world’s largest eyewear company. The necessity of a deeper understanding between tech and fashion became evident in numerous collaborations which happened in the last three years. Many products were first developed by tech manufacturers and then re-designed by fashion brands, as for example a version of Fitbit by Tory Burch. Others, like MICA by Intel and the fashion designer brand Opening Ceremony, were conceived from scratch in a common work of tech and fashion company. Since 2014 Intel and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) are teaming up in order to facilitate these relationships.
The expectations in the fashion industry regarding wearables were high in the last couple of years. The challenge now, as viewed from the fashion media side, is to bypass the smartwatches, the accessories extensions of smartphones and the fitness trackers and develop authentic new products, not the incarnation of the mobile phone in the form of clothing.
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices in clothing will fundamentally change how we think about clothing. The separation between fashion and technology is becoming blurred. In the words of Vice President of Global Product Innovation at Levi Strauss & Co., Paul Dillinger from a recent transworld business article — “I believe that the meaning of clothing and our understanding of its value and place in our lives is about to change,” Dillinger says. “As advanced technologies begin to weave themselves into our clothing, we have an opportunity to re-write the relationship with the objects that we buy and wear.” (http://business.transworld.net/features/levi-leads-future-of-design-with-goggles-conductive-textiles-technology/#paxHH7Bfog7hl08d.97)
→ As the main purpose of the mobile phone is no longer to make phone calls. The main purpose of clothing will not only be for cover, personal statement or aesthetics but also technological functionality (health, social, safety etc …).
Levis and Google will be among the first to fuse tech & fashion (ATAP project Jacquard) to cobuild a piece of clothing. The aim of these types of projects is not to create more devices to carry but to actually weave the technology into the clothing so we are free of the clutter of devices (https://www.google.com/atap/project-jacquard/)
A second example from Google which is perfect for wearables is ATAP project soli.(https://www.google.com/atap/project-soli/)
This is a very fast moving field. The Soli team is still working to finalize the circuit board but it has gone from the size of a large backpack to the size of an micro SD card in about a year. As MEMS, photonics and nanotechnology advance we will see more examples of device infused clothing. We only pointed out two technologies from one company. This article would be several volumes if we tried to cover all the new smart fabrics, BioMEMS/MEMS/Nano sensors and wearable technology coming on the horizon.
As we see with Google Project Jacquard and Project Soli the technology is becoming invisible and the fashion is the focus. In a quote from the above article Mr. Dillinger expressed, “Thinking about this type of future can be uncomfortable for designers,” he says. “It will require designers to cultivate new skills and be daring as they imagine their role in the creation of a new industry. “
Technology should become a new tool for fashion designers. Already realizing this reality the authors have been working on bringing a technology curriculum to fashion schools.
Tech, fashion and healthcare are very disparate disciplines. The fashion industry has poor knowledge of technology. The technology industry has a lack of understanding & respect for the importance of the fashion industry. Current personal healthcare products are designed to be impersonal “cold & hard” but will be transformed by technology and popularized by “warm & soft” fashion. We need to build a bridge between fashion, tech and health by teaching these three disciplines as one integrated course .
→ If the technology works perfect but it is ugly, no one will use it. If the technology is somewhat flawed but it is aesthetically gorgeous people will forgive you. One can never underestimate the power of attractiveness.
→ Clothing will now have not only an esthetic function but also a technological function.
→ Medical devices that are aesthetically pleasing are used more frequently. These devices can disrupt the field by simply enhancing user experience.
The issue the class will address is, we now have technology that must be incorporated into fashion.
When a fashion designer is handed a piece of technology and given constraints:
- This piece of technology must touch the skin.
- This piece of technology has a 20oz battery.
- This piece of technology has a rigidness of this size and flexibility of this size.
- This piece of technology goes around the ankle / wrist etc …
- This piece of technology has a screen -or- must hide the screen.
- This piece of technology administers a drug every two hours.
The attractiveness of the wearer is somehow increased by wearing these awkward pieces of technology. They have to take these constraints and build something that is aesthetically pleasing.
The fashion designer has to have the training to know:
- How can I hide this technology in the garment?
- How can I showcase this technology in the garment?
- How can I use this technology to enhance the physical appearance of the wearer?
- How can I apply other’s solutions (using this technology) in my clothing?
- How can I apply the current state of the art in wearables to solve my current problem?
These questions have never been asked before by fashion students. We believe that with the training from our proposed class they will be able to answer these questions. The class provides an understanding of wearable devices as a fusion of contemporary fashion and advanced technology. The students will investigate existing products through case studies covering production, marketing and distribution issues. Gain an insider’s view on collaboration with tech companies by designing a new wearable device for their portfolio.
The structure of the 15 week class will include the why, where and how of fashion and technology collaboration, including the current state of wearables in fashion. Students will get acquainted with chips and MEMS Sensors (Atmel) and discuss how it is possible to make clothing intelligent (Intel). They will also develop ways of make clothing social (Facebook). The class will analyze the Fitness Trackers (the first wave of wearables) and will talk about Smart Glasses and the issues of introducing a product that is worn on the face. The class will address what kind of clothing would be prescribed by your doctor — Integrating Health & Activity Trackers. As students progress in preparing their projects, we will work on building wearable devices and wearable mobile devices (clothing incorporating — iPhone & Android). Their prototypes might be executed using 3D printing, so we will discuss the future of 3D printed clothing as well as the dressing room of the future using Virtual Reality. Important issues, such as security challenges, human factor and user experience in wearables will be brought to the students’ attention.
Students will engage in the new paradigm of rapid design(prototype utilizing 3D printing), validation and sales. They will learn to use social media to validate, market, and launch on crowdsourcing / crowdfunding platforms in order to insure a strong online sales pipeline.
By the end of the class they would have been exposed to multiple designs, examples and concepts. So that when newly graduated fashion designers are shown a piece of technology, they will have a good understanding of how to validate, create, market and sell a piece of fashion tech that excites the wearer. This is the key to the r/evolution of the fashion industry in the Digital Age.
Authors:
Elena Philipova
