Fashion News Around the World
What are some of the latest fashion business news around the globe? Check out our highlights of some top fashion stories below.
Weather Forecasting: The Next Fashion Trend?
Climate change and its unpredictability can be a challenge for designers creating seasonal collections a year ahead before hitting store shelves. While the see now, buy now trend is an attempt to move away from seasonal collections and adapt to consumer desires for instant fashion, predicting weather is still a challenge.
The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York has come up with a solution to offer a new course called “Predictive Analytics for Planning and Forecasting: Case Studies with Weatherization.” The course is designed to appeal to students with an interest in retail and merchandising, in hope that it will help the fashion industry learn, adapt, and deal with the impact of climate change.
3D Printing for a Good Cause:
When it comes to apparel, 3D printing is often associated with creating futuristic fashion designs, but the technology can be more powerful and provide new solutions for manufacturing products such as prosthetics.
Currently, there are an estimated 1.9 million amputees in the U.S. and 185,000 amputations surgeries per year. However, as many prosthetics are traditionally made by hand, it becomes very expensive and often many can’t afford to buy.
Caption: An example of Exo Prosthetics titanium 3D-printed limb. (image credit: Behance, FashNerd)
William Root’s company Exo Prosthetics is taking an innovative solution to this problem by using 3D printing to make prosthetics more affordable and aesthetically pleasing. The company allows individuals to design their prosthetic to fit perfectly by using a 3D scanner to create and print titanium 3D printed limbs.
An Organic Cotton CSA Business Model:
Rhett Godfrey, founder of the Chetna Coalition (ChetCo) is collaborating with Indian farmers to build a new business model for cotton farming. Similar to a CSA model, it aims to revolutionize the whole supply chain and push companies to be more environmentally aware, and improve the livelihood of farmers.
India is the second largest producer after China, but more than 90% of its cotton is produced using GMO seeds. In the past few years, ChetCo set up seed banks using non-GMO seeds and help the farmers find a market outside. By 2015, the company had produced over 2 million organic cotton items using this supply chain.
The State of Fashion Report: A Glimpse into 2017
The fashion industry is now estimated at $2.4 trillion and is the world’s seventh-largest economy if ranked alongside individual countries’ GDP, according to the McKinsey Global Fashion Index. In a recent report, the McKinsey teamed up with Business of Fashion to understand the behaviors of 2016, and how fashion companies can improve and leverage new technologies into 2017 to be more successful.
The report highlights 10 trends set to define the fashion agenda in 2017 including:
- Uncertainty of the global economy following Brexit, trade deals and terrorism from 2016 and what it means for the fashion industry.
- A comeback in China including growing middle and upper classes who are shopping more.
- Smart shoppers who are more technology-driven, and adapting to the fast-paced consumer and immediate fashion trend.
- Wellness and health movement in apparel.
- Digitization of the supply chain and enhanced sourcing opportunities.
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