Over the years technology has impacted many sectors globally, one of them being fashion retail.
Fashion retail has adopted many different elements of technology such as NFC tags, RFID to more extravagant ideas like VR (Virtual Reality),3D prototyping, and more. This blog explores 3 next-generation technologies that are revolutionising the fashion retail sector.
CuteCircuit & Smart fabric
The concept of CuteCircuit, a fashion company founded in London in 2004, is all about wearable technology fashion. They have produced items such as Soundshirt, Hug Shirt, Interactive Fashion, Ready-to-wear, and other collaboration products. Today we are going to explore the smart fabric within CuteCircuits Hug Shirt. With the effect of Covid-19 and with social distancing becoming the new norm across the globe, the Hug Shirt’s technology allows others to send socially distanced hugs to the person wearing the shirt.
How does this work? Within the shirts there is an actuator embedded within the fabric which recreates the feeling, touch, and emotion of a hug, without a real hug. The technology links to the Hug Shirt App which understands what’s being communicated via the sensors, this technology can also work when only one person has the shirt as the other person is able to download the app and send hugs for the wearer to feel.
This smart fabric concept is not only sustainable, with the fabric being made from only woven conductive textiles, which allows the fabric to perform the unique function of the hug. But it also comes from the idea of creating a connection within a world of social distancing.
Making fashion circular
Another amazing technology within fashion retail is Lablaco, a retail platform helping brands become sustainable. Creating an application that is helping fashion become circular, allowing brands to tokenise products at any level of the supply chain. This allows consumers to understand what retailers are doing to be sustainable.
Spin the app aimed at consumers, allows users to tokenise their pre-owned fashion with digital ownership across the circular model of ‘share, borrow, swap, and trade’. For example, this platform allows consumers to purchase a garment/item of fashion that may have been worn by their favourite influencers, and once worn they can donate it to private users within the app and in return, they will get another item new or preowned. Users can also post content on their accounts and communicate with other users. Head over to the Spin website and find out more if you’re interested in getting involved!
Ditto Africa
Ditto Africa is a marketplace fashion app, which allows African brands to sell items to both local and global consumers. As a brand, they focus on working with local people for example models, photographers, and creatives to share the narratives with a real perspective. The brand is making the most of technologies such as 3D and AR, this is to reduce their market time. Using 3D designs allows them to become more sustainable. Soon AR and VR will be integrated within the shopping experience and allow consumers to find clothing in their size without having to order and send back items, they’ll be able to try-on without physically going into a store! How amazing is that?
Technology is having a huge impact on the fashion retail sector, allowing companies to help with the loneliness of social distancing while helping consumers and brands to become more sustainable. Even with the power of AR and VR, we might never have to send clothes back and they’ll arrive knowing that they fit how we wish! As the years go on, technology is only going to get more and more impressive and will help brands become even more sustainable!