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GLOBAL INVESTOR 1.16 — 58<br />
PERSPECTIVES ON<br />
FASHION TRENDS<br />
6/6<br />
V . A . L . É . R . I . E<br />
L . A . M . O . N . T . A . G . N . E<br />
is a French Canadian artist-designer and PhD scholar researching “Performative Wearables:<br />
Bodies, <strong>Fashion</strong> and Technology” at Concordia University, where she teaches<br />
in the Department of Design & Computation Arts. She is the owner and designer at 3lectromode,<br />
a wearable electronics atelier based in Montreal.<br />
What do you see as the global<br />
trends (e.g. digitalization)<br />
influencing today’s fashions and<br />
the fashion market?<br />
Fabrication<br />
• 3D printing (hard, soft, zero-waste)<br />
• On-demand fabrication<br />
• Customization<br />
• Local production<br />
• DIY (Ikea idea to clothing)<br />
• Reuse / recycle / repair (Petit h)<br />
• Reduce washing (instantly sanitized<br />
through air/sun, etc.)<br />
• Seamless design to house technology<br />
(integrated telecommunications /<br />
renewable power)<br />
Sales and distribution<br />
• Showrooms with integrated direct<br />
home delivery (no more lugging bags)<br />
• 3D body scanning / avatars<br />
(transferable from store to store)<br />
• Seamless purchase from online<br />
runway shows<br />
• Searchable algorithms for streetwear<br />
photos (you can immediately buy<br />
what you see someone wearing)<br />
• “Real” advertising: Instagram<br />
ambassadors<br />
• <strong>Fashion</strong> as experience / community<br />
vs. old model of product sales<br />
How are these trends changing<br />
fashion and the fashion market?<br />
• Consume less<br />
• Consume made-to-fit<br />
• Consume and share<br />
• Consume immediately (from runway)<br />
• Consumer as designer<br />
• Consume in collectives p2p<br />
(not corporations)<br />
The future of fashion will be less about<br />
consuming and more about experiencing.<br />
How this will take effect will come about<br />
through a radical inversion of the clientcompany<br />
relationship. Co-creative<br />
spaces, technologies and applications<br />
will provide new platforms for customers<br />
to create bespoke designs on demand.<br />
A transparency of production chains and<br />
fabrication will follow suit. Where and<br />
how things are made will become more<br />
important, along with their “carbonfootprint”<br />
afterlife. Objects’ material<br />
and historical transformations will be<br />
inscribed in our experience of them,<br />
i.e. we will know the provenance of<br />
materials, fabrication and legacy. In that<br />
process, we will also leave our<br />
mark on these objects’ histories and<br />
future uses. <strong>Fashion</strong> and technology<br />
will become an ongoing process<br />
communicated over time and space.<br />
Where do you get inspiration<br />
for your designs and collections?<br />
• History<br />
• Literature<br />
• Poetry<br />
• Art<br />
• Music<br />
• Politics<br />
Art and history are the greatest inspiration<br />
for fashion. <strong>Fashion</strong> that lives in<br />
the vacuum of the moment is dangerous<br />
because fashion is also a political force:<br />
of gender, of race, of power, of economics<br />
– and we can use that force to create<br />
change. <strong>Fashion</strong> is always straddling<br />
the past, present and future. I used to<br />
have an argument with my father about<br />
how the future would look: Would it be<br />
Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” (1985) or Ridley<br />
Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982)? To me it<br />
has become both: absurd and dystopian,<br />
light and heavy, in the future and in the<br />
past, atemporal and ironic, beautiful<br />
and ugly, frivolous and all-important.<br />
✖ 3LECTROMODE.COM
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