Kind of re-post, but this theme is of great interest for me so I’ll put it here anyway. A part of a text about the future of fashion that I wrote for my another blog (in russian)-

‘It may seem that all the last futuristic experiments in fashion are only a drop in an ocean, that couldn’t change anything in the industry in the near future. In fact that interest in modern technologies as well as forthcoming changes in the fashion world are the consequences of tendencies that already influenced the development of modern society in lots of different aspects. Thus there is no question as to whether will we use the results of these experiments, but there is still a question what forms will they adapt to and how will they affect fashion industry.

For now we could observe that big brands are in no hurry to use the fruits of progress and there are a number of reasons for it. Firstly we have a recession that slowed down all the experiments which are quite costly not to mention the unpredictability of the results of applying them. Also considering the tough times there is a certain nostalgia on the runways aiming to recreate the feeling of stability and peace. At the same time for a designer it is quite a challenge to embrace a new technologies because he should change the way he works fundamentally. He will not only has to reconsider his aesthetic  in order to adapt it to the new features and opportunities. He also will has to change the whole process of work cooperating with the engineers, video artists and a wide range of different technologists and specialists whose commitment will be required by the innovative nature of the idea behind the collection. Because of these difficulties it is logical to assume that it should be haute couture which has to take the role of the explorer of innovative technologies in the fashion field. The haute couture itself is in desperate need of high-tech reincarnation. The time-consuming and expensive techniques couldn’t be a problem for the luxury ateliers with tens of years of history. However the essence of haute couture is not just in the quantity of hours spent on hand-sewing and beadwork for each outfit or in the sky-high price range but in the boundary-pushing design. This is the true luxury. By these criteria the best examples of high-tech fashion could be placed between the most outrageous haute couture fantasies. Every one of Chalayan’s animatronic dresses took nearly half a year of work of a group of specialists- fashion and engineering designers, seamstresses and pattern-makers. The result of such work made everyone look in awe even the seen-it-all critics, while the Haute couture fashion weeks regularly produce only doubts and questions for the worth of its own existence. Perhaps, the injection of technologies would be able to make designers rethink the essence of haute couture in terms of new times and bring back the status of real art pieces to its creations.

Nowadays, the examples of synthesis of arts and technologies have a noticeable presence in the presentation area. For quite a long time now runways had been infused with ‘the special effects’. Just remember those choreographic performance done by former ballerina Shalom Harlow at the finale of Alexander McQueen ss99 show, where robots were splattering wet paint on her crisp white dress or the mesmerizing hologram of Kate Moss in the finale of the fashion show of the same designer in aw06 season.  Most likely that in future the fashion show will be fully made on the computer and represented in form of 3D hologram runway. This way it will be possible to do a countless variations of experiments and visuallize literally everything that comes to designer’s mind.’

I suspect that there are lots of mistakes but hope that the main idea is clear enough)