New Fashion Order

The power-houses of fashion are facing competition. For ages fashion has been dictated by an elite of taste-makers, their whims being watched and instantly copied to become affordable fashion for everybody. But why is it that you would let somebody else dictate and decide what you find beautiful? Of course for a long time being in-fashion gave your personality status, but nowadays in the crowded urban environment more important to have a personal signature and style. One that is recognizable and distinguishes you from the crowd and not easily copied.

So why not make your own fashion? And I don't mean behind the sewing machine, I mean behind the computer. There are some small new businesses mushrooming that truly let you build and create your fashion the way you want it.

Take Knittedonline they offer customized knittings made according to your wishes and creativity. The basic white canvas models can be used as a starting point for your pattern design to create cushions, mittens, hats, tea-cosies, baby-covers. The only limit is your fantasy. You can also order an already existing pattern. Knittedonline is also a community of knitwear designers and other self-taught creatives. You can upload your pattern and if it starts selling you will earn a 5% commission, which eventually could create a small-scale cooperative of knitwear designers, each owning a stake in the success of the company/site.

Unitedstyles is another website let you design your own fashion to stand out from the crowd. The basic principle is quite similar to knittedonline. you choose a white canvas model and then style it by modifying details and adding color and pattern. The prices are very reasonable and competitive with high-street fashion shops. The company structure of Unitedstyles is a typical late capitalistic one; successful entrepreneur at the head of a strong international creative crew.

Both examples naturally remind me of Threadless or NikeID who where the personalization pioneers. NikeID is more of a promotion model for Nike than an actual money-maker, or at least I have never heard of any profit generated by NikeID. The difference is that for Knittedonline and Unitedstyles this is their core business.  Threadless is a great grass-root t-shirt company with it's core in graphic design and print with an avant-la-lettre participatory and competitive element.

I believe these companies are answering an essential need for post-modern people living in crowded urban areas, and the internet is the facilitator and enabler of a new kind of business, Affordable customization on demand. It might change the fashion system.

Fashions new Value-networks

The fashion system is sick and those of us that have been asking ourselves how it is possible that H&M can sell men's knitted sweaters for 20 euro, know it. Upon the first economic implosion in 2008 the fashion industry suffered, the October shows and sales-rooms where a catastrophe, serious plummeting of orders, read my post on Reshaping Attitudes in Arnhem, where some possible scenarios for change where proposed.

Now some changes are happening for real;  recently I have read about a lot of new "indie" brands that are inter-weaving consumable fashion products with social responsibility and care for the environment. Fashions answer to slumping markets, ethical concerns (outsourcing to 3rd world countries, sweat-shops, modern slavery, child-labor) and environmental concerns (pollution through the whole production and logistics chain)  is to bring the making process closer to home through local value networks. 

Many of these little companies have of course been inspired by American Apparel, who was one of the first to bring production back home. Also Nukohiva by Floortje Dessing was early in starting her sustainable fashion initiative (read my post here). American Apparel and Nukohiva are already big, these new "indie" brands/companies are independent they are not (yet) bought up by any fashion conglomerates, their business-models are different. They just do what they think is right, much of the time for very personal reasons and feelings of injustice.

I-did, slow fashion is a Utrecht fashion company,  so far it's a webshop and it has one real shop in the Pastoe factory in Utrecht. Skilled emigrants work in this craft-shop, either they bring in their foreign diplomas (that are not recognized in NL) or they follow an internal MBO education of half a year to learn the basics. The fashion is quirky and not bound to seasons, there is not a seasonal new arrival, items just stay in the collection for a long time. Each item has a name-tag of the seamstress that made it. It's like the traceability known from food brought into the fashion industry, it adds a personal connection, the idea that a real human being was making this with care and love.

I-did Slow Fashion

MMM, Mode Met een Missie, tagline; everybody deserves a second chance.
is more powered by social injustice, people that have to re-integrate into the labor market can get a chance with them. delinquents, disenfranchised, unsociable people, people with low work ethos and unschooled emigrants alike. Much of the funding for the company comes from the funds that are made available to re-integrate this kind of people. But to get out of the sphere of only being a social reintegration company they have teamed up with Claes Iversen, a young Dutch fashion designer. So social injustice and integration is getting linked to haute couture, quite a bridge to cross. But why not?

Claes Iversen for Ami-a-toi by Mode Met een Missie

Golden Hook, knitted by French grannys
grand-mothers master the art of knitting, we all know that. Golden Hook works together with grand-mothers to create their collection of fashionable knits (ala Wool-and-the-gang) It's a way for the pensioners to earn an extra buck in their old days. For the yarn Golden Hook works with local suppliers like sheep herds wool from Creuse, the cotton is coming from Egypt.

Golden Hook

Gudrun & Gudrun, an Faeroe Island knitting company that makes use of the local population to knit re-interpreted traditional Faeroe sweaters. Both have studied and worked in Denmark and upon their return to Iceland found they had to reinvent themselves to earn a living. They work with local wool and local Faeroe women to do the knitting paying fair salaries. In order to meet demand they have expanded their knitting community to also include women from Jordan and the Baltic countries. Their presentation and style is very fashionable and professional. Once when it became known that Sara Lund from The Killing (Forbrydelsen) was always wearing a Gudrun & Gudrun sweater, then their fame really started to rise.

Sara Lund (the Killing) in her famous Gudrun Gudrun snowflake sweater

Sløjfen, grannys from this Copenhagens activity center help produce fashionable sweaters for Henrik Vibskov and other Danish fashion designers, i.e. Mads Nørregård. The group calls themselves Kaffeslabberasen (coffeedrinking and chatting) and that is also the title of a book that has recently been published. In the book 7 designers have designed knitwear, the 7 grannies have knit it and written the recipes.

MIY Make-it-yourself

The dreams of many science fiction writers like Philip K.Dick and Neal Stephenson are getting closer to becoming reality. 3D printing is closing the gap between prototyping as a very exclusive and expensive manufacturing method and just making. Earlier this year I wrote about the RepRap that makes prototyping more affordable. Some of the most recent endeavors in prototyping show that it's possible to hack, crack and rethink the equipment one needs to prototype, what materials prototyping comes in and what purposes it serves.

Behrokh Khoshnevis developed a concept to 3D print houses out of concrete on architectural scale. Already in 2005 actually, but I only discovered lately, he calls his machine a contour crafter. It would be able to print a house in just 24H. If that comes to live it will revolutionize the construction industry in many ways. First of all it will make house-building much cheaper, secondly it will create much less waste that the traditional construction methods do today.

via Inhabitat

via Inhabitat

During this years designweek in Milan, Tim Knapen and Unfold where showing an experiment. A virtual pottery-wheel that the spectators could use to craft a vase out of thin air. They where literally waving with their hands at a laser-projection to shape a vase. The hand-movements where being tracked with motion-tracking software, and all the vases created being saved in the computer. The last 16 created being projected on the wall. Every now and then a creation would be printed with a 3D clay printer (modified RepRap). Again this turns the creation and manufacturing process upside down. The spectator becomes a participant in the creation process, and even if he cannot make pottery at all, he can still create one of these vases. Also the visual language that goes with these vases is different. The wireframe that CAM software uses to build the vase creates traces in the clay-print. It creates a new type of facets. 

via creativeapplications.net

via designboom.com

l'Artisan Electronique, Virtual Pottery Wheel from Unfold on Vimeo.

 
But what maybe impressed me most was the Endless chair-printer robot devised by Dirk van der Kooij, on show during the Dutch Designweek in the new lifestyle shop by PietHein Eek. 
Dirk has imported an old robot from China and reprogrammed it into a 3D printer, it takes polymer granulate and injects that into a 3D form, by exhausting a continuous (endless) string of hot polymer, that gets stacked on-top of itself, and eventually forms a chair. This new system of production breaks with the idea of mass-production because it is not constrained to a mold, every chair can be different to the previous one. each production loop can be used to test and improve previous types. The robot can also be used for up-cycling end-of-life consumer products, by re-using their plastic waste.

 

These are great signals of change, change that will be impactful in many ways. Production, distribution and consumption will be turned up-side down once these methods develop into consumer friendly propositions. There is still some way to go, and this may all seem quite experimental, but once when the raw edges get sanded off then our system will change. People will first have to become aware that they can have a high level of influence on their new products, and then they will have to step into the creation and production process to participate. I'm sure in the beginning many will feel slightly uncomfortable doing this, but soon it will be normal. And don't we hear all the time, that people are craving to customize and personalize. I'm sure they will learn quick.

And then we can all live the Philip K.Dick and Neal Stephenson dreams.