A look at the future. What will your shoes look like in 15 years?
We all want to predict the future, but it’s an ever-changing complexity that appears simply unpredictable. The future is a clouded mass ahead of us and if we can decipher it, we’ll be ahead of our game as designers.
Looking at the past {link to blog post: http://blog.inscape.ac.za/2014/04/look-past-history-important/ } is as important as looking at the future. We need to know where we’ve come from in order to know where we are going.
Short term trends are well documented by many people. Pantone provides trend forecasting resources and inspiration {link to site: https://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/category.aspx?ca=90 } for designers, offering a glimpse into the upcoming seasons. However, this only spans as far as S/S 2015. What about 15 years from now?
If we look that far into the future, our trend forecasting needs deeper roots. We need to consider more than the surface level impact of the world on fashion. What will the socio-economic impact be? What about religion and politics? Furthermore, we need to consider geological impact – will we already feel the effects of global warming in 15 years’ time?
World events have a large impact on fashion trends across the board. Take for example ‘The Olympic Legacy’ {link to site: http://www.surfdome.com/fashion_blog/fashions-olympic-legacy/ } trend in sportswear after the 2012 London Olympics. How are these fashions different from those stemming from the more recent Sochi games? The Olympics are a recurring event, can we take advantage of this in our forecasting?
We hear about currency crises, slowing growth and environmental problems, but we don’t ever really think about how these changes are going to affect the fashion industry. Further still, what impact will these issues have in the future?
Saverio Romeo explores the retail experience of the future on onwindows.com {link to site: http://www.onwindows.com/Article/sustainability-and-technology-e28093-the-future-of-fashion-retail-2471#.U1YgWfmSx8E }:
“We want to engage with designers. We could go to stores, which are not just retail stores anymore, but open spaces for customers where they can use 3D holograms to design their own clothes or develop their own style through a combination of existing clothes and ideas coming from the store designers in real-time.”
Saverio Romeo also makes a good point of sustainability in the future of fashion retail, talking about making consumers part of the end-to-end process and making them sustainably aware. By 3D printing our own clothes or accessories, we would become more aware and involved.
A current concept for footwear of the future {link to site: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3023579/design-crime/the-footwear-of-the-future-looks-totally-gross} involves (slightly gross looking) shoes printed from a synthetic biological material that has the ability to repair itself. Is this what your shoes will look like in 15 years?
If we open our minds to the possibilities of the future (considering and embracing the inevitable change) we can visualise the world 15 years from now. If we carefully consider the trends and cultural norms for this world, we might be prepared and ultimately ahead of our game as designers.