Tailor-Made Designs: A More Accessible Luxury for the Masses
“A good dressmaker must be an architect for the patterns, a sculptor for the form, a painter for the drawings, a musician for the harmony, and a philosopher for the measure”
- Balenciaga
Fashion. An ever-evolving breeding ground for creative inspiration, mass production and now – technology innovation. Since the day the first sewing machine was manufactured and used to produce a custom-fit, trendy outfit, the fashion industry grew into something barely recognizable when we think about where it all started. From Singer sewing machine, to e-commerce success. As with technology, fashion continues to be an ever-evolving, cyclical phenomenon.
But do we actually know where fashion design started? If we retrace our footsteps through the halls of history, we find 18th century Haute Couture, translated as “high fashion”, by French designer Rose Bertin – who designed tailor-made clothes for Queen Marie Antoinette. The term ‘Haute Couture” refers to the handmade manufacturing of exclusive, perfectly tailored garments using high-quality and unique fabrics.
To this day, couture fashion is seen as somewhat of an “affluent” concept – a trend that still allures the mass market. Since its “democratization”, the fashion industry has given rise to larger retailers such as H&M, Inditex, and Uniqlo – basing their entire production on “fast fashion”.
This process, where clothing barely leaves the catwalk before reaching the shelves, has given way to trend-setting for the masses. In fact, a new trend causes somewhat of a frenzy among retailers, initiating hyper-rapid design and supply chain processes. Why? To get trends to market before traditional labels get the first bite of the apple.
Once a garment and accessory is strutted down the runway come September and February, you can be sure you’ll find fast fashion replicas before the originals even hit the stores. This has grown into somewhat of an accustomed occurrence, leaving retailers to order significant quantities which ultimately compromises quality.
At one stage, fast fashion had become just that – low quality, poor fit, yet trendy and affordable.
That is, until, the likes of artificial intelligence (AI), 3-D, smart mirrors, and robotics technology hit the fashion industry like Christmas decorations hit supermarkets in October. The ability to get the latest trends, with quality fabrics in your exact measurements, within a few days? It simply can’t be true!...
This avalanche of innovation now allows any fashion brand to understand their customers better than ever before – providing them with a completely new, customized experience. As AI makes waves in the fashion industry, brands can now entirely reshape product design and development – and customers can enjoy pre-determined trends and tailored designs.
Perhaps fashion is finally moving toward quality over quantity…?
A more customized and definitely more profitable fashion industry is vastly approaching. With companies like MySuit – using 3D self-measuring kits online – customers can now measure and scan themselves using their phone camera and order a custom-made suit online. How long does this process take? A full 3 minutes to gather and generate over 100,000 data points.
AI in fashion, like iLuK, is also allowing each one of us to find those ever elusive outfits that suit our body type and fashion preference. Such AI-enabled clothes and outfits are not only tailored for different occasions and weather, but also to the user’s style and body type using your 3D measurement data and through AI software to analyze your body-shape in showing how it would look on you.
And other Fit Tech companies like Couturease, which have a mission to provide designers with a more automated way of creating couture-fit patterns efficiently and from anywhere in the world. But that’s not where it ends. The ability of using AI and algorithms to auto-fit patterns will make standard clothing sizes a thing of the past. This trend of having a custom fit for any design is fast approaching, and will soon be an established feature – all made possible through the latest fashion-forward technology.
The future of AI-assisted fashion…
As AI-software, Lidar sensor measuring and smart mirror technology make their way more and more into the modern-day fashion industry, we can’t help but wonder if brands will use these helpful mechanisms as a way of making smarter, more intentional decisions regarding fit and product development. Will they utilize real-time AI insights and truly give the masses a customized experience?
Before we know it, our artificial friends will become the pattern makers, the designers will focus purely on their creations, and we the procurers of custom, made-to-fit, trendy fashion.
Today, AI and Fit Tech trends are bringing high quality, custom fits, trend, and affordability to the fashionable masses and beyond. In a world where affluency is being phased out of custom fashion, technology is opening the door to tailored accessibility like never before.
Yours in Excellent Fit
Darlene Newman-Trois