How will we dress in 2025?

What are you wearing right now? Now, no peeking at the label, do you know what it’s made of, who manufactured it and where? And how do you think your answers might be different in 15 years’ time?

I’ve asked these questions around Forum’s office, and the last one in particular completely throws people. Of course, no one can predict the future. The dramatic shifts during the current recession show how knotty interactions create bewildering uncertainty. But they also demonstrate the need to think ahead.

As futurists, our job is to find ways to manage uncertainty. We use tools like scenarios, visions and trend spotting to explore the alternatives and raise awareness of long-term issues. Fashion Futures is aiming to do just that for clothing. Supported by Levi Strauss & Co, we’re exploring various possible worlds for the global apparel industry in 2025.

Clothing is ripe for some futures thinking. There are thorny issues like water and pesticide use in cotton fields; massive challenges over worker conditions and wages in production; and lengthy supply chains that criss-cross the world and navigate tit-for-tat protectionism. And there’s the small matter of consumer power: a cool trillion dollars worldwide is spent on clothes by consumers, whose demands change faster than the models’ outfits on a catwalk. But it’s actually what we do next – the wearing, washing, drying, ironing and disposal – that creates the most environmental damage.

Society’s fascination with ‘fast fashion’ is emerging as a hot topic. Critics argue that this high-turnover industry is fundamentally unsustainable: cheap and cheerful goods are worn one day and binned the next. But how might behavioural changes or new technologies create a different future?

The current recession shows how consumer attitudes can change. Take the newborn fascination for repairing clothes and shoes rather than buying new ones; or the high street shoppers now wrestling each other for that last vintage print dress in the charity shop.

It’s suddenly very cool to look like you’re wearing your grandparent’s party outfit – and maybe not just because fashion trends go round in circles. Is there something else emerging, something transparently ethical about shunning fashionable fads during a recession?

This could be one possible picture for fashion in 2025. Instead of bling, boasts and blandness we’d turn to durable, dependable and different. Thrifty ‘make do and mend’, customisable repair in the home and localised production in communities would be all the rage.

But a recession need not be the only route to more sustainable fashion. Instead, can we imagine another world where technology allows us to rapidly and regularly change our appearance while avoiding the worst environmental impacts?

Scientists are working on ‘smart clothing’ that could allow you to alter the pattern or colour of your T-shirt depending on the temperature, how you feel or even on a message from your favourite designer in Milan. So you could change your look without changing the item. Others are pioneering nano-tech clothing that self-cleans while you wear it – saving the cash and carbon soaked up by energy-intensive washing.

We simply don’t know what clothing will look like in 2025. That’s why it’s important to consider alternatives. If a newly resurgent fashion industry continues to grow, then the business success stories of tomorrow could come from inspiring innovations. Or if we really are seeing a values shift and a newfound consumer curiosity, then perhaps something you’re wearing now could become the next family heirloom.

Richard Hardyment is Senior Strategic Adviser at Forum for the Future. Read more about Forum's future thinking here.

1 May 2009

Richard Hardyment