3D Technology in the Fashion Industry

3D technology has been around for some time, and I think in the fashion business or the fashion industry, it's been slow on the uptake because it wasn't as refined as it is today. And I think we're at a point now where it's not only easier to use, it's much more realistic, much more foolproof, for want of a better term. And therefore, I think it's— disruptive may not be the right word, but certainly embraced and will be much more embedded in the fashion industry. Everything from merchandising to initial product prototypes to all the way through to the consumer, actually, being able to buy from product that really hasn't been made but has been created in a 3D way. And I think some of the newer technologies that are coming out, the smaller scanners such as some of the things that Google's doing with Project Tango are giving us the opportunity now to make things much more instant. So I think we're going to find it accelerate. So I think the word really is it will accelerate very quickly in the fashion industry. It really depends on how far you want to go. If you're looking to integrate to your patternmaking system and then carry that through to prototyping and merchandising and then carry that 3D product all the way through to online or whether that's in store or on an app, you're looking at a much larger initiative than if you're looking at bringing 3D in as printing or prototyping exclusively and playing with it in a cheap and cheerful way. I've seen 3D implementations that are long and quite successful, but they are more of a foundation than they are a creative tool. If you're bringing something in to use it in a creative way, you have an opportunity to do something cheap and cheerful that doesn't require a lot of financial investment or a lot of management support. If you're looking at a much larger investment, then the normal rules of technology apply, and that is to have executive sponsorship, to really work to help users and supply chain and people across your organization understand how to do that. And that then means a larger investment in both change management and in the infrastructure and architecture itself. So it really does depend. There's no wrong way to do it. I think the only wrong way to do it is to not play with it. I certainly think that investment in retail, bringing the opportunity for customers to understand, well, how clothing might fit— we're at a point in time now where literally a body scanner can fit in someone's pocket. So if you, if you look at product and your specifications and you make that available and then give the consumer the opportunity to scan themselves or to understand better how they fit into your product, sell-through is great. So I think that, that is one investment. But I do think manufacturing opportunities, certainly in the automotive industry, in the construction industry, we're seeing 3D, and we've seen it for a long time, be quite successful. And it saves a lot of money because obviously building a new automobile is different than building a new handbag. Or is it? It is and it isn't. So I do think that we will find investments across the board, both manufacturing, at retail, but I also think we're going to see investments from consumers. I think people are going to be exploring the world in a more 3D way. Take home furnishings, for example. If you're able to scan your room very easily in a device the size of your your phone, then when you go shopping for furniture, you'll know what fits. You'll be able to put it in situ. You'll be able to understand it. Why not something similar in, in fashion? Again, I don't think pattern making is required. Some of the traditional ways of using 3D was to take a fabric specification and to take a pattern and then stitch that pattern together in 3D and then apply the weight, the drape, the color, the texture of the fabric to then create virtual garments. And that is one way to do it. But if you think about rapid prototyping, and again, I'm going back to things like Project Tango with Google where you can scan items and therefore have them— have a 3D prototype, have an engineering view ready, then it's as simple as someone creating an app to then layer surface and design over that. So you don't Soon you won't have to have that for apparel. I think that 3D scanning will give footwear the opportunity to customize and personalize in a much more rapid way than they do today, which is funny because footwear seem to have mastered how to take components such as Nike ID, their initiative, and hugely successful and allow people to mix and match and personalize. I think 3D footwear, 3D scanning for footwear opens up all sorts of possibilities in terms of heel heights and dress shoes. It doesn't just need to be trainers and embellishment, but you can actually look at the structure of the shoe and the, for want of a better term, structure of your foot. And I think if you start looking at things that way, it opens up all sorts of possibilities for design teams to create product that perhaps is more comfortable or higher or more stylish, and for a woman to understand how these shoes are going to fit, how they're going to feel. And the same is true for men. All feet aren't equal, neither are all shoes. Larger than apparel and footwear and the fashion industry, I would say that there are a lot of fields or industries that are embracing 3D and have been for a long time. Obviously, we know doing things like automotive design, aerospace engineering, but the medical industry, actually quite fascinating looking at how 3D scan and then the creation of things like a cast for a broken arm could be and are being made that resemble things like fishnet, but yet they are, to mend broken bones. So innovative uses of the technology applied to different fields, I would say medical is probably one of the ones that are leading. I do think that the fashion and footwear industry are right behind that, and maybe in some instances with product facsimiles are in fact catching up quickly. You know, we have companies like Motorola who use a lot of 3D printing A lot of accessories companies use 3D printing, and Intel's RealSense 3D camera is another example of something that's outside of what we normally think of as CAD/CAM 3D manufacturing. All of those things become cross-sector, and I think we will find more and more non-related industries will borrow technology from each other. Previously, I've spoken about the use of mobile technology and how the consumerization of IT has put very powerful technology in everyone's handbag or in their pocket. And I think that creative folks, when the user interface is easy and when the tasks are simple because we make decisions on the go, I think that creative folks have absolutely no— would have absolutely no problem. In fact, I know many companies' creative areas are using things like 3D printing. Interestingly enough, designers do have to think in 3D space. If you're a jewelry designer, you think like an engineer. People don't equate that, but you're working with metal and you're creating 3D shapes. The same is true of footwear, the same is true of handbags. And if you're an apparel designer, you're taking a flat piece of cloth and you know how to cut that and turn that into a 3-dimensional object. So that really is engineering. We call it pattern making, we call it draping, we call it designing. So as long as the tools are quite easy and straightforward to use, if they don't have an interface that looks like you're building a rocket ship, but if they are something that's much more drag-drop, touchscreen, they don't necessarily have to be mobile, but certainly borrowing from touchscreen and interfaces that borrow from the mobile space, I think we'll find creative people will very much enjoy doing this and drag and drop and create prototypes in 3D before they actually launch real product. And so perhaps that's disruptive. I think it's just another creative tool. When computer-aided textile design came to be, I don't know, I'm going to say 30 years ago, and that's how I started my career, many textile designers were concerned that they would lose their creativity and they would lose their jobs to computers. And that wasn't the case at all. It was just another tool, just like oil paint, just like watercolor. The computer is another tool to render something, and those applications were in fact another creative tool in the, in the paint box. I think the same's true of 3D technology. The faster it works, the easier it is to use, the more creative people will just play with it, because that's what we do when we create. We just want to play, and when there's a tool that allows us to do that in an easy way, Why wouldn't we?