Sustainable fashion with the help of new technology

Fashion could become a more sustainable business with the help of new technology. Although there is still a long way to go before this transformation occurs, progress is being made, and the entire clothing production chain is being revolutionized.

Most large clothing brands use their customers to a business model that allows no chance of wearing clothes more than three times before it is replaced. Waste and contamination are no longer compatible with the manufacturing sector's new digital transformation standards as environmental consciousness grows.

It is time for the industry to take a massive leap toward more sustainable and efficient production methods. The introduction of new technology, such as 3D printing and the knowledge of technology, could assist the sector in a new way of thinking, designing, producing, and possibly establishing new sustainable rules in the fashion world.

The fashion world needs to change the way it manufactures clothes. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), the second sector that contaminated the planet the most is fashion. The facts are clear: The production of a single garment requires approximately 7500 liters of water, equivalent to water consumed over seven years by the average person.

With those figures, the fashion industry's biggest challenge today would inevitably be transforming a polluting market into a cleaner one, manufacturing fresh clothes without harming the environment. Customers' and industry-wide awareness is needed, but this is no longer sufficient. Will technology be the key to implementing any significant market changes?

Can you imagine the future of clothes?

What do you think the clothing of the future would look like? What would women wear in the year 2100? Let us imagine a translucent knit, an electric dress, the fabric that vanishes, and an integrated belt that adapts the body to changes in the air.

Even though there is no such thing as an integrated belt today, the fashion industry collaborates with scientists to develop new fabrics. NASA has been developing intelligent wearables that regulate body temperature or track vital signs by wearable tracking.

Many companies now offer apparel that preserves heat or sportswear that integrates textile engineering. T-shirts with ultrafast drying times will be very beneficial to athletes and firefighters, mining staff, and the military forces.

While breathless clothing seems an evolution, the transformation of the fashion industry is just at the beginning. New fabrics under production or already on the market will, for example, allow clothes to change colors through ultrathin wires operated by a phone app while also adjusting to weather conditions through the use of biohybrid content or anti-surveillance stealth-wear clothing to escape cameras.

When thought about the future of fashion, nanotechnologies may also be a response: data can be obtained from a person's wearing clothing. Moreover, clothing personalization will undoubtedly reduce the need for mass manufacturing.

The fashion industry will use 3D printing, additive production, artificial intelligence, robotics, and many more emerging innovations to help it follow an environmentally friendly approach from the production of fabrics to the distribution of its finished goods. It will be a marvelous development to print clothing. It is the new way to produce garments, minimize manufacturing costs, and give consumers a specialized experience is by 3D printing.

Currently, additive manufacturing is often used to produce art, items of clothes that are not to be worn every day but have endless possibilities for this kind of technology. For now, brands usually use 3d print to create prototypes or tools that can help produce an accessory that still takes time to manufacture. The goal for brands is to develop lightweight, convenient, and flexible fabrics as traditional fabrics.

3D technology is currently used primarily to build and knit garments and accessories. The computer will generate an exact size template of apparel you need that you can import or download. One advantage is that clothing is made as a single item, but the most remarkable thing is that it is incredibly flexible and sustainable.

As far as artificial intelligence are concerned, it has the same priorities in the apparel industry as other industrial sectors: pollution prevention, defect removal, and supply chain optimization. This technology also offers the opportunity for new creations. Some of the major brands in the fashion industry now have artificial intelligence incorporated.

Although the industry will still change the way clothing is produced by implementing automated processes or other technology, there is a part of the world that depends entirely upon the textile industry to face the transformation before the millions of workers who rely on it. Fashion should improve to follow more sustainable behaviors, but we cannot ignore the implications on some areas around the planet that may have tremendous impacts.