“It’s the end of fashion as we know it” says Li Edelkoort
Design Indaba 2015: fashion is dead, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort has declared, describing the fashion industry as “a ridiculous and pathetic parody of what it has been” (+ interview).
Lidewij Edelkoort, one of the world’s most influential fashion forecasters, used her annual presentation at Design Indaba in Cape Town to fire a broadside at the industry. She told Dezeen: “This is the end of fashion as we know it.”
Edelkoort said her interest in fashion had now been replaced by an interest in clothes, since fashion has lost touch with what is going on in the world and what people want.
“Fashion is insular and is placing itself outside society, which is a very dangerous step,” she said in an interview with Dezeen after her presentation.
SO WHAT IS NEXT?
A REAL-TIME FASHION SYSTEM (#RTFS)?
The RTFS is a vision for a new product design process for companies and independent designers, that results in the accurate prediction of individual needs & product demand. The Real-Time Fashion System could be the new and innovative system for the future of fashion and the new paradigm for the future of the fashion and retail ecosystem
ELSE Corp is proposing a new paradigm for the future of fashion and retail ecosystem-the “Real-time Fashion System”, which shall be open, 3D CAD based and specially AI-driven, as an alternative in some cases, but mostly a complimentary approach to what exists today in the fashion industry and called “ready to wear”. Concretely, on the base of the SaaS Cloud platform E.L.S.E., the startup will be integrating a new product design process for fashion and design companies and customers, as well as building a community and platform for integration of the new era of CAD 3D design widely adapted, extensive use of 3D technology as well as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality interaction models for consumers, designers and fashion & retail services, putting the Artificial Intelligence in the center of this interaction.
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
ELSE Corp, a Virtual Retail company, previously known as the inventor and active developer since 2014 of another strategic concept for the Fashion Retail sector, the #VirtualRetail, is now ready to propose a new technology and a new approach to the fashion retail and manufacturing, moving it towards a direct to consumer, customer pull approach – going from analytics and prediction to demand planning; personal demand to optimized product design and from the individual product design to its on demand manufacture.
The #RTFS is perfectly applicable on top of the Virtual Retail business model, with its offer of mass customized, made to order, made to measure and produced on-demand, fashion products & services.
The three key elements of the #RTFS are:
- REAL TIME: the products are immediately available and could be further adapted in real-time to each customer’s individual needs
- DIRECT TO CONSUMER: the customers are deeply involved in the product purchase, personalization, co-design and manufacturing planning
- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: the system learns from customers (their individual style) and the companies (their design vision), to propose individual designs for each customer, to be perfect from the style point of view and optimized in size
know more: http://else-rtfs.com
