4 Ways Technology Is Influencing Fashion
In the words of 14-year-old valley girls everywhere, “technology is like, hella lit right now.” Incidentally, this is exactly the market fashion companies are vying to capture the attention of, and if technology is on their customer’s minds’ (what with ubiquitous smartphone usage and screens practically glued to their eyeballs), then you can be sure it is on the mind of designers and manufacturers as well.
Let’s be real: technology seeps into every aspect of our lives, and in the fashion industry, it’s in the process of revolutionizing everything. From things that we wear, to how we know what to wear, to how we buy what we wear, there isn’t an aspect that is untouched: design, marketing, customer feedback, client analytics, you name it.
Let’s take a look at a few ways that tech touches and betters our fashion lives in just about every conceivable way.
Fashion blogs
For those social media influencers out there in the world, the impact it’s had on the fashion world is undeniable. Modeling has gone from being represented by an agent and working gigs to show up in catalogs or even runways, to now just being pretty and provocative enough to gather a social media following and have fashion and lifestyle brands throwing themselves at you. At the same time, you have blogs like Thread building up credibility and cache to offer reliable fashion advice for both clueless pre-pubescent males as well as working-class adults looking for news ideas for a Saturday night.
Augmented reality coming to a store near you
Right now, one of the only barriers to shopping online is the inability to try something on for fit. That is soon to change with the implementation of avatars. These digital doppelgangers sport your real-life measurements and display in a photorealistic, 3D model just how a certain item of clothing might fit you. No more needing to shop until you drop!
Faster and more efficient shopping
Speaking of revolutionized shopping, it’s now possible to buy clothes faster and cheaper than ever before, not just because of the aforementioned novelty of trying on tons of different clothes without breaking a sweat. With e-commerce platforms such as Lyst, perusing for new threads is a one stop shop. This is like the ultra-super-Walmart of clothes stores, with over 11,000 brands and retailers in one digital location with a single digital shopping cart.
If you still like the charm of real-world shopping, save on prices with an innovative mobile app like Saivian which gives you cash back simply for taking a photo of your receipt. Such simple, yet effective technology lets you then spend more on your favorite clothes!
Wearable tech
We’re already sporting watches by traditional fashion brands that operate on Android Wear’s operating system. Soon, we will have clothes that can read our vitals, change colors, and perhaps tell us when it’s time for a wash.
So there you have it. The future marriage of tech and fashion is certainly exciting!