Free Access to Digital Design Information will Transform the Industry | [a]industri | PI Apparel

I hope I'll be able to bring a bit of punk into this conference here, into this talk. And what you see right here is a tape recording of Dead Kennedys. I think this is from the mid-'80s. Home taping is killing record industry profits. We left this side blank so that you can help. I think that's brilliant. Part of this is going to be about the similarities between the music industry and the fashion industry, and what we can learn from the music industry. But the title of this talk here, or this presentation, is, as you might have read, Open Source Design Development: How Free Access to Digital Design Information Will Transform the Fashion Industry. And I don't know exactly how this will transform it, but these are some sort of qualified guesses or theories or thoughts I have about it that I will share with you here. It could also be called "Listen to the Music," or if we want to be a bit more punk, "The End of Fashion Brands." "Kärräysminen." I'm Erik Lindqvist. I have a background as a tailor, a designer, a researcher at the Swedish School of Textile. I worked in the industry, sort of stretching from couture and bespoke tailoring to sportswear. I co-created the label Attacac in 2016, sort of benchmarking the setup of how we can work with digital 3D visualisations for fashion. Today, I operate a small factory, a digital-physical factory in Sweden. We produce digital and physical garments. So we do all our product developments in CLO 3D and the visualisations. Animations. We use Clo3D also for all our production, all the grading, all the layout planning. Everything is done in the same system today. We still have a traditional 2D CAD software, but I haven't used it for 2 months, to be honest. So we are a team of 7 people, 4 working in the physical production and 3 sort of in digital and and management. A industry is— no, yeah, that's another example. This is another example of Digger Physical Things. This is the thing we did for Puma Innovation a few years ago. It's sort of the concept for Puma's first esports collection. You know, companies like Puma, they profit on selling merch. And the kids today, they don't look at football any longer. They look at esports. They want to sell t-shirts to the kids playing it. But there's no sound coming out. I don't know if that's intentional. We can live without the sound. But it's quite a fantastic project for me to work with, where we can sort of really combine the physical and the digital. And then After these conceptual developments, the sketches, this sort of became the first sponsored esports team that Puma sponsored. And basically, this was a remake of Puma's T7 tracksuit that was really comfortable to sit down in.

Um, we—

A Industry. A is for— it's good to have a company starting with A because you always get first ahead, first, first in line. But it's also since I before had this fashion brand called Attacac, and 2 years ago we divided Attacac into 2 parts. So Attacac still exists as a brand, but The in-house production that we were doing and all the consultancies I was carrying out is now done under the label A-Industry. Just to give you some background, with Atacac, we sort of pioneered the sort of digital physical things. We started Atacac in 2016, and me and Jimmy together carried on then for, I think, 4 years. Here's one of my favourite things we did. This is a hologram box showcasing 3D garments in scale 1:1 in the physical room. So we're mixing 19th century mirroring technology with modern 3D visualisations. It is better with sound, isn't it? Oh, we speed through that a bit. So yeah. And with Attacac, we were sort of pioneers in, I think it's 2016, starting actually selling garments on rendered images. Because we were a bit— we found out about CLO and the 3D technology back then, and we were a bit kind of shocked that we couldn't find any examples of brands actually selling garments based on rendered images. So said and done, we started an independent fashion brand. Mainly with the motivation that if we start small, we can do anything, because we can't really fail, or we can fail, but it won't really affect us so much if you don't invest loads of money. So, we did that, and we elaborated a lot with different possibilities. We set up online fitting rooms where you could— we tested different tryouts for online fitting, and we did a lot of animations, and we went to pay-per-apparel, twice, to speak. And, but the most important thing we did with Altherac for what I'm speaking about here today is what we call shareware, meaning that every time when we released a new style for sale, we also released the 2D pattern and the 3D model for free downloading. Because frankly, the whole fashion industry is built on copying. Everyone is copying each other. So we have thought like, if anyone want to copy what we do, I'd rather see them doing a good copy than a bad copy, and then they don't have to spend weeks for, I don't know, tracing that pattern and everything. And this also created quite a following for us. Um, and, and, and if you downloaded a pattern, you got a CLO file, you got a DXF file, um, and you've got a PDF file as well to print out. So we got a very nice followers of home sewers, very cute people putting up pictures on Instagram of things that they've done. But the important thing for me, or like for the process of what I'm doing, was this, what happened, that we had a client, a guy living in Luxembourg, buying this green shirt, and he downloaded Clo. And, oh, he downloaded, I don't want to play, I guess he downloaded Clo, but he downloaded the garment. And sort of redesigned it quite radically. And then he came back to me saying that, hey, I redesigned that shirt, I have some shirt fabrics, can I send that over to you? Because I heard that you have your in-house manufacturing and use your factory as my 3D printing service for this. And I was like, yeah, sure, that's brilliant. So we did him a couple of shirts and then we used his design for a new Apocake drop. And then suddenly there I was starting to think like, what will happen with fashion brands if information is available for anyone? And what about music then? Why did I start with this punk tape? Since, yeah, that is since the music industry has already gone through what we are talking about here today. I don't know, has any of you gone shopping records now while being in Amsterdam? Found out the local Virgin Megastores? No, you haven't, because there are none any longer. Everyone is— we're consuming our music through streamed media. And also, so that's a really game changer. And that change is not only for us as consumers, it's also for artists or musicians. If you're— I can create a song today, probably just downloading an app on my phone and in 10 minutes play a song here. It will probably sound as shit, but it will be a unique new tune that probably no one ever heard. So it really, you know, it's really, really changed the whole setup. And so that it's everything from creation to distribution. And I learned that in Sweden on Spotify, The majority of everything that is streamed is independent music now. The music that has been created and produced without any connection to any major record labels. And record labels, that used to be the main thing on the record. You see here, the record label, that is printed larger than the artist. And when I was buying records in the '90s, I was quite nerdy, but when I was buying records, I moved to London only to buy records. Records, because I couldn't find them in Sweden, the records I wanted. Then I always knew which record label the music, the artist I was listening to was signed on. Who knows that today? I don't know. And why was it like this? That was since it was super expensive to record and distribute music. This is supposed to have been the world's most expensive recording studio. At least when I googled the world's most expensive recording studio, this was image number one. And it looks really, yeah, I don't know, extensive. So we're gonna listen to a very wise man being interviewed 20 years ago It's David Bowie in Swedish television about the internet and the development of the music industry. And now we see if the music, uh, sound works.

I think that we're moving into a time when music will be fully available in the same way that water or electricity is, from the internet. When broadband becomes the order of the day everywhere, which won't be that long, it can only be a few years away. When that finally happens, I think it will obliterate the idea of the record industry at the moment, change it. I think the emphasis on what music is to our lives will change somewhat, the character, the nature of it. And I think that artists themselves will find that they have to fall back on performance to provide them with incomes, because I don't think their music will make them any money.

Yeah, it's quite right. It was quite right. And imagine that he's talking about the fashion industry and he's saying that the fashion— oh, here it was, here I've written down that, yeah, I think that we're moving into music, blah blah blah. And if it would be fashion, this would be, I think that we're moving into a time when fashion designs will be fully available in the same way as water or electricity is from the internet. And it will obliterate the idea of the fashion industry and change it. And I think the emphasis of what fashion is to our lives will change. The character and the nature of it. And this could sound a bit sad. And I guess it is, in a way, because with change— Things change and some things get lost. And I kind of miss those record stores. But on the other hand, I think it's fantastic with the accessibility to music. But also music is something else to us today. At least to me. Maybe it's since I'm older, but I think it's not only that. And so then, let's have a look at— what it looked like then, 20 years ago. Then we— or even more than that, we went through all these different hardwares in music industry. And in year 2000, we already had the technique for music streaming that Bowie is talking about here. Of course, it wasn't mainstream, but the technique was there. So then what kind of technique do we have today in the fashion industry? And one thing that I'm going to sort of base this is on— and I use CLO3D for my designs, and CLO released one year ago what they call this Closet Connect, so an open platform online where any CLO users could share their designs or sell them or just put them up for show. Here you can find then, I think it's right now, I think it's about 700 designs that people agreed that you can use these for physical production. And you know, that doesn't really matter if they agree to that, because copyright protection for patents in fashion industry is almost none. So just if you get hold of the shape, you can quite safely use it. There's 167 digital fabrics from the European fabric supplier Swatchon. Now we have the sound why we shouldn't have it. I recorded this on the airport yesterday. So this means that these fabrics you can download and also order as physical, um, physical fabrics right away because they have all these in stock in Korea. Um, we, with IA Industry, we did a project last year together with, with House Sanders sitting over here at House of You. This is a print house here in the Netherlands for digital printing. So we took 10 of their stock fabrics, the sustainable stock fabrics, and we digitised those, meaning we measured all the physical properties and got a bunch of numbers and typed them into CLO to get that, the drape and the feel and everything. And then we scanned the textures. You probably know how this works. So then one could Before ordering any fabrics, fabric samples, one can apply that fabric on your design. And I thought this was suitable from a conceptual level because this, this is fabrics then that is for digital printing. And here we had a link also to House of Views. You could go in there and download the fabric, order fabric samples, and then apply your print sketches on your 3D designs before ordering any fabrics there. Yeah, you get it. What I'm currently doing is sort of version 2 of the shareware project that we did earlier, which we now call Open Source Production Patterns. So I re-released a lot of other cut patterns. I hosted workshops with a number of different student groups, and I also invited others to contribute to build like an online open-source production pattern archive. Because there's more— there's— we have these 700 garments in Closet Connect, and there's more in different CG Traders and these sites where you can download 3D models. But a lot of those styles, they are not made for physical production. In here, uh, I set up a manual, a PDF, that sort of goes through exactly how a garment— how I think a garment should be set up in CLO, so that you can also print out the pattern and use it. So this is very dry, you just go through everything with not just seam allowances, fusing, grading, point of measurements, everything. And then I want to ask all of you to join in and be this catalyst of change, because this is going to happen sooner or later. You like it or not, all this information will be out there. So we better together put together a sort of a good base to work from. 'Cause this has been like trade secrets for 200 years. Now it will be open for everyone, the patents. And we can let it take 10 years, or we can just pull it together and have a good base setting up in, I don't know, 2 years. So then right now we can see this jacket, you see here, it's size range, it just has 3 sizes. And this is some background information. And then one can download it. And this, this comes as the really interesting thing. Do you know what this is? Have you seen this? This is Clo3D's latest software called Genie. They released it as a beta before Christmas. It's only You could say it's a simplified version of the 3D interface in CLO. They also tossed in some of these cute avatars for animation games and online metaverse things. And that's probably what it's going to be used for first. But this is sort of the— this is a snapshot version of garment design. So here you can pull in any avatar and adjust the size of it. And then they have some predefined garments, but you can also pull in any of the designs from our open source library. And it autogrades on that avatar. So it changes in size automatically. And if you change the avatar, The garment is auto-generated again. So here we pull in— this is a bit— a scan on me. And now it's going to be another one again. And then the garment changes and it fits again. And we still have the pattern in the background. We never see it. And you can do all the— a lot of— you can't do everything because it's still a beta, but you can apply textures and graphics and different trims, and you can even change the shape here and the lines and everything, and the pattern is there in the background. And for being a beta version, this works fantastically. It doesn't work to 100% today, but I would say it works to like well 90-95%. And this auto-grading, when Claude released that 2 years ago, it was pretty crap. Now it's very good. We use that for our production. We still oversee the result, but we use it for grading things for production. And—

I originally was going to come here and talk to you about a revolution, but with the discussion of the post-truth world, it feels like a counter-revolution now. And it's been a very peaceful and quiet revolution, thanks to smartphones, thanks to social media, and thanks to the vast amount of information now available online to anyone. And this revolution has allowed new fields to grow, and I like to call this field online open-source investigation. And we can use it to influence the powerful, we can use it to challenge the powerful, and we can bring them to accountability as well. Now, I started Bellingcat because I wanted to teach people how to do this.

It used to be that the tools of media production were in the hands of the media. And with the rise of the internet, that is no longer true. With blogging starting in 2000, and social media starting in 2004, and YouTube, which I think started in 2005, Now the tools for media production have been given to the people formerly known as the audience. This with technique, you see, it's fantastic, but it's very hard. I was supposed to say something before this started, but you already seen this. This is Bellingcat, the independent group of journalists. They managed to pinpoint the, the name of the commanding officer that ordered the shootdown of the plane in Ukraine in 2014. By searching on Google Maps and Russian Facebook, for example. And they talk about that, then, yeah, how the media work has changed due to access to other technologies. And so then again, yeah, I see this, this Gini tool, that's the first step towards something, towards something that could be seen as online design, open source design development. And these tools that earlier have been like very secretively kept within the industry. Now almost anyone will be able to then download a 3D style and a pattern, change it, apply a print if they like, bring in a fabric which is also available in physical life. And then render those images and put them up for sale. And still today, I mean, this, you still need, even with the software, you need a bit of skills. Or you can compare it to when I started my first online store in 2009, I think. That cost €20,000. Today, you could have started an online store while I was speaking. Here for like, I don't know, €15. That easy. And that's where we will be heading with this. And then we see the rise of new marketplaces online or communities. This is Metafactory, such an online community which Winston and some other guys are operating. Can you just tell us quickly what this is?

Sure. So Metafactory is a community built on blockchain, and it's not fashion native at all. It's a bunch of tech guys predominantly, but the ethos in tech of open source is almost natural now. And we were moving into— so we are a marketplace for fashion, community-built fashion brands, and we were looking for our first cut and sew manufacturing. So we actually found Rickard and his open source patterns, and it was the only, really the only thing that we found. And, um, we actually downloaded Clo and started figuring it out. And I think the, the shock of there not really being open source was one thing, but the second part of it is, uh, is it feels inevitable and, uh, it's an amazing new consumer experience when the consumer is activated to be creative as part of the entire design process. And I feel like it's a service to, you know, we talk a lot about consumers making choices and what does a consumer want. I think involving the consumer in the creative process of fashion is probably the quickest and most sustainable way to really the evolution of the industry.

I guess you could see me at a factory. That's, that's an online platform where the people at that platform together curates the what's going to be sold there. Yeah. And then 2 years ago, um, 1 year ago, I don't know, Winston then downloaded a jacket. We'll come back to that, a jacket, and made this journey. And so what we're looking at, the— we have now then, we have open source production patterns, we have bigger physical materials We also have online open-source design development tools coming up. We have new kinds of pre-order platforms and digital communities for sales for this. We also have, within this online open-source design development and also other softwares parallel to this, we have digital autograding through the UV mapping, meaning that if you change the avatar, the garment automatically changes. In the UV mapping. And then we have local microfactories. And yeah, as I said, I can't tell exactly where this will be leading, but I think if we look at what happened to the music industry, we can start sort of trying to imagine where this will be. And I don't know, it might— And this is sort of— this jacket then, this is an Attacack jacket with a print designed by Winston. Solar Meta Factory, uh, Solon Pre-Order, produced us with the cutest label I ever seen that Winston designed, which Winston to the left and me to the right holding a pair of scissors. So, um, yeah, this is my sketch of what we might be facing, uh, then. That we, maybe we have digital creators supplying us with open-source patterns, print designs, whatever it could be. We have Digidigital fabrics. We might then have Digidigital curators picking things out of this and putting up things for sale in digital communities and pre-order. When we reached, when you sold, say, 100 garments, then you could, we can produce those. In a factory, or small factory. And there we have this automatic UV mapping grading, meaning that we can have 100 individual sizes, and we can plot those out in one lay on a single-ply cutting machine. And we can have a production being almost as efficient as a traditional garment production. And then I think if this should really work out, we should, we should try to set up some sort of smart contracts here, meaning that when, if a garment is created and sold like that, part of that revenue should go back to the digital creators through some sort of blockchain setup. Exactly how that will work out, It's— someone will work that out. And then, before we end, back to Bowie and what he said. We listen to it once again.

I think that we're moving into a time when music will be fully available in the same way that water or electricity is, from the internet. When broadband becomes the order of the day. Everywhere, which won't be that long, it can only be a few years away. When that finally happens, I think it will obliterate the idea of the record industry at the moment, change it. I think the emphasis on what music is to our lives will change somewhat, the character, the nature of it. And I think that artists themselves will find that they have to fall back on performance performers to provide them with incomes, because I don't think their music will make them any money.

I don't know. The question is, is it smart contracts that the designers will have to fall back on, or is it something else? And all the information is out there. Um, and is it relevant to compare fashion brands to record labels. And we're probably going to see, you know, just as we've seen in the music industry, we have loads of parallel tracks in there somehow. We still have the kind of old, old music is still out there. We still have commercial artists being, being sort of set together by record labels and promoted in a similar way as they were earlier. And then we have independent music and other types of music. Also from an aesthetical point of view, being created due to digitalisation. So, yeah, thanks for listening. I believe we also have— we even have time for some questions. Here you go. Do you ever worry about bigger high street or like fashion giants using the patterns that you put up for open source? No, why should I? I don't know, maybe it sounds nice to have like independent designers or like the smaller community using it, but you don't worry about it. Oh, but everyone's already been doing that for a long time, and it's not only the big sort of high street fashions and also the, the couture or the sort of the designer labels, they buy things from H&M and knock those off to get basic fits. So it already works all the way back and forth. And everyone who's claiming something else, they're lying. Thank you. That was really inspiring.

I also think it always develops because you say, well, this is the sketch for the future, but then, okay, um, we go that direction, and then there will be another sketch. So it's, it's always developing, so there's never an end to that. That makes it interesting and also not a problem to copy, because then after that there will be something new.

Yeah, of course, this is only one sketch, and we will see parallel things developing. And of course, what I've been outlining here is not a placeable straightaway in an upscaled level. But then the making of Tesla wasn't either in the beginning. And a lot of people said that it will never be possible to make that car on an upscaled level. And where are we now? And the industry desperately needs to be changed. I didn't go into the environmental facts here because I know you're all, every one of you already know those things. Yeah.

I also thought it was kind of interesting with the artist part and being more reliant in the music industry of concerts and events and started to think about what will the events and fashion industry go? What type of collaborations will there be? Like, when everything becomes open sources, then other parts will also be more important, I think. And what is your thoughts about that? Like, runways and events in general?

And yeah, that's the question. What will still be there to pay for? If everything is available. And I think eventually we might only be buying into production capacity. That's why I started a factory. But I know it's a tricky question where we will be heading. And I think from one point of view, from a creative point of view, it's fantastic. That you can have access to different things. And of course, from another point of view, things are problematic. But then there's a lot of things which are problematic that we need to handle. And these things are not happening tomorrow, but we should be aware of those. What is it? And the pioneers of these movements, they are probably not sitting here. But there are some tech geniuses somewhere. And I would say that the successful players in the fashion industry for the future, that will be, they will come from the tech industry. We will see, you know, we will have like the Airbnbs of fashion or, players coming in from, from the side. And some, several of the big brands will manage to make that transition, but several others will be replaced by, by others coming in with other, other kinds of solutions that we haven't seen before.