Nicoline van Enter says biofabrication will disrupt apparel more than automation because you can grow materials that are biodegradable, transformable, and store data in DNA. Products could stay alive and be repurposed. The industry lacks biological training to make it work.
I think the biggest disruption, and then you look a little bit further into the future, is biofabrication. Beyond a single doubt. This, I mean, everybody now understandably focuses on automation of our current system, which is still basically a mechanical system, even though you have new digital additions to that. Being able to actually program materials from the start, to grow materials that are fully biodegradable or that could change from one thing to the other, So you invest energy into a product and you don't want to put it in the ground after you use it. You want to keep it alive basically and pass it on to something else. The idea of installing data inside materials, bioinformatics, which is a huge thing. Most people don't even realize that DNA is the biggest data storage system. And it's so far removed in thinking at this moment from the fashion industry. But then if you look at the technical developments within biofabrication, those are highly relevant to fashion and could really create those circular systems that we want. But it poses great challenges indeed in terms of education, etc., etc., because we don't teach biology or any of that currently in the industry.
