The Interline will be closing its doors for the holidays from the 22nd of December. We ended our official run of content yesterday, with a roundup of 2023’s most popular features, and we will return in early January. Until then, the team here wishes our readers all the best for the holiday season.
This was very much AI’s year. Setting the stage for a year of AI ubiquity was the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 – after which the ball began rolling on the rapid push towards “generative AI everywhere,” which came to characterise most of the technology conversation in 2023. There are very few parallels for us to draw on, since these early days of the generative AI boom have been defined by a growing sense of both potential and panic.
The EU (who have been very active this year when it comes to regulating urgent matters, more on that later) last week agreed to the world’s first set of provisional rules to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). While the details of the legislative text are still being fine-tuned out before they are finalised, we’re sure to see the impact of this new set of rules play out in 2024 – although their definition of “safety” remains fairly nebulous, and we fully expect to see technology moving faster than regulations can keep up with.
The EU has also been proactive in introducing or persevering with multiple sustainability regulations for the fashion and textiles industry this year. Again, the specifics of these legislations are sometimes less concrete than observers and analysts would have hoped, but the broad trend has been clear: sustainability has been elevated from a peripheral concern to a central imperative for those all along fashion’s value chain, regardless of size.
And rightly so – the threats of climate change are being felt acutely not only by the fashion industry, but by everyone on the planet, and every industry has a role to play in mitigating its impact. But even as awareness around sustainability grows amongst consumers and the fashion industry focuses more on making products last longer, easier to repair and recycle, fast fashion continues to grow. Without wishing to sound too dramatic about it all, we are likely to witness a tug of war over the soul of fashion continue to play out next year – with volume, variety, and growth stacked on one side, and quality, durability, degrowth, and transparency on the other.
The third and final area that defined this year was digital product creation (DPC). Our DPC Report 2023 is an ode to everyone who transformed what was a small branch of fashion technology into a prominent enterprise sector – one that is now an indispensable part of fashion’s future.
It’s likely we’ll see these three areas crop up again and again in the year to come – along with others – and the entire team here is committed to analysing each of them in the level of practical, pragmatic detail that defines this publication. When the clock ticks over into March 2024, we will be in The Interline’s fourth year – and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to continue producing unique, longform content, partnering with world-leading events, publishing industry-defining reports, and much more.
And our central commitment remains: we’ll continue to make all our content free, and as widely accessible as possible.
For now, we wish all our readers a wonderful holiday season, and we look forward to continuing to expand our unique fashion technology community in 2024.
