Key Takeaways:
- Increasing consumer demand for sustainable and ethical clothing could be slowly moving the needle away from fast fashion.
- Adoption of AI and machine learning in fashion for creative design, sustainable production, and personalised shopping experiences, could help contribute to greater understanding and engagement.
- UK government funding for small fashion brands to adopt AI is scaling upwards, signalling a future where sustainability is integrated with technological innovation, leading to further consumer awareness.
While the drive to halt fast fashion is nothing new, there is a stylish tribe of well-dressed shoppers searching for eco-friendly selections this winter. Flouting fast fashion, these consumers favour beautiful designs and brilliant brands who are stitching sustainability into their labels.
While online shoppers increasingly demand sustainable and ethical clothing, they’ll support fashion brands all the more if they uphold positive eco-conscious values, engage emerging technology and collaborate more to ensure sustainability and make circular methods of manufacturing and distributing clothes in a fair market tops of their priority list.
The eco-conscious drive for change is being put into practice by consumers and retailers alike. The fast fashion model of excessive production and waste continues to go out of style as 61% of today’s UK retailers are thinking about sustainability when they shop.
Consequently, Retailers are facing pressure to improve sustainability across their supply chains as they respond to the sharp shift in consumer values. Yet, while the appetite for fast fashion has fallen, the damaging impact remains.
Shifting consumer habits versus fast fashion
The term ‘fast fashion’ refers to the consumerist phenomenon characterised by an insatiable desire for new clothes. Brands and retailers worldwide happily responded by getting the newest trends into shops as quickly and cheaply as possible. According to Greenmatch.co.uk, fast fashion contributes to a significant increase in clothing waste with the fashion industry’s contribution to climate change accounting for 8-10% of total global emissions. Leading up to the festive period in the UK, shoppers spent £3.5 billion on outfits for Christmas parties in 2022, with an estimated 8 million items ending up in landfills.
Greenmatch.co.uk goes on to state that plummeting costs of garments over the past 20 years led to a gross buildup of cheap, disposable clothes. On average, the fashion industry sends millions of garments to landfills daily, with alarming statistics showing about 64% of the 32 billion items produced annually ending up in landfills. In the US, around 11.3 million tons of textiles, 85% of all textiles, are landfilled yearly. Meanwhile, in the UK, 360,000 tonnes of reusable clothing ends up in landfill annually.
A recent report from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) reveals the massive impact of fast fashion on clothing waste with roughly 1 in 2 people throwing unwanted clothes away. A shocking four in five 18-24s are purchasing clothes at least once a month while the UK’s average monthly spend is £76.53 per person. The same WRAP Report adds that the average UK adult owns118 clothing items, highlighting the wastefulness of fast fashion and overconsumption.
Today’s consumers, willing to purchase in a digital world, are calling for greater accountability and transparency from those same online clothing brands they support. Consumers’ buying patterns have shifted with a new tribe of shoppers embracing e-commerce with an ethical conscience. They are looking for brands with a sustainability message as well as choosing to shop local, support small fashion outlets and think more about recycling old clothes or reclaiming vintage items.
In addition, there is a growing preference to invest in longer lasting, high quality brands with green credentials at their core. For example, the demand for luxury brands remains high, yet consumers are looking more closely at where materials, textiles and even jewellery is sourced from. People are more generally more selective and discerning, buying everything from luxury gemstone cufflinks to ethical socks from bespoke designers and well-researched ethically-sourced brands.
AI tools infiltrating the fashion industry
From machine learning algorithms analysing consumer data to AI tools aiding designers in their creative process, AI is infiltrating every aspect of today’s fashion landscape. Digital design technologies like 3D visualisation and virtual sampling enable more efficient and sustainable product development. Brands can feed AI systems images of previous popular designs and customer preferences, and from there predict current trends to create new and original designs. All existing implementations utilise machine learning models in collaboration with personalised ideas, creativity and research. Softwear is revolutionising clothing production by developing automated garment-producing machinery.
Real-world cases also demonstrate the potential. For example, Zalando, a company based in Berlin, has been nicknamed ‘Europe’s most fashionable tech company’. The firm uses AI to source clothes and size recommendations to provide a personal shopping experience to deliver items across 23 countries to 49 million customers. In addition, Google’s project Muze applies machine learning to design fashion pieces and deliver automated wardrobe designing tools to the market.
Heuritech’s predictive service analyses millions of social media images to forecast fashion trends. In doing so, AI and automation are revolutionising how clothing is envisioned, made and mass marketed. In another example, Sewbo is a pioneering robot sewing company that uses robotics to reduce costs and lead times. In relation to sustainability, this firm advocates for more responsive manufacturing and less waste. Reprogrammable systems also enable new concepts like on-demand manufacturing of custom-fit clothing.
From the perspectives of design, manufacturing or distribution, fashion has gained powerful digital tools that, augmented with human creativity, experience and expertise, can balance creativity with sustainability. By leveraging data and intelligent systems, the fashion industry can drive forward dramatic improvements in areas from eco-materials to ethical labour practices. The future of fashion will be written in code, with AI and automation helping brands manage profit with positive impact.
Support for smaller sustainable brands to adopt AI
When it comes to fashion start-ups, the UK government pledged a share of £32 million to support smaller outlets to adopt new productivity-boosting AI tools in future projects. AI presents new opportunities for small fashion brands to increase their focus on sustainability. While some of the technology is still fairly new, many brands have already begun using AI in creative ways that help reduce waste and reduce carbon emissions. For example, Kapdaa is developing AI-powered cloth recycling to reduce the environmental footprint and cut the estimated 921,000 tonnes of used textiles discarded in UK household waste each year.
Kapdaa’s innovative technology sorts and processes textile waste by material, removing zips and buttons to increase recycling and reduce landfills. The technology replaces manual methods of labelling and using handheld machines to scan garments individually. The company champions sustainability and also collaborates with designers, textile manufacturers, fabric weavers, mills and other brands to convert and reuse fabric offcuts.
Meanwhile, a recent UK Government’s White Paper introduced a pro-innovation approach to help regulate the adoption of AI in start-ups. The guidelines will essentially make it easier for fashion businesses to utilise emerging tech resources to innovate, grow and create jobs in the sector going forward.
On the other end of the fashion spectrum, the mass-market players have been able to respond more rapidly to AI trends and consumer demand. Brands like H&M, Zara, UNIQLO, and Top Shop are known for being able to deliver the latest seasonal trends faster than expected, something that sets them apart and has been central to their success. Going forward, AI has the potential to increase agility in their supply chains, as well as improve key challenges around quality control – all with the greater intention of transforming the fast fashion industry into a more eco-friendly and sustainable space.
Brands embracing consumer trends and new technologies
Today’s consumers seem more discerning about the sustainability credentials of their purchases and the ethics of brands they buy from. Bespoke designer brands, smaller sustainable labels and high street favourites are engaging and proactively adapting to meet the changing demands of consumers. These adaptations are taking place alongside the dynamic landscape of emerging tech and the exciting capabilities that AI and machine learning have to offer. And in the next few years, we should see the results of the technologies being adopted and augmented on skilled designers and manufacturing processes within the fashion industry.
It’s a new age for fashion, as it shifts its stance on sustainability; navigating the struggle between fast fashion’s ubiquity and the emerging future of innovative, eco-conscious fashion. By tapping into consumers’ desire for sustainable style, forward-thinking fashion brands can drive positive change and invest in emerging tech to keep the momentum going.