4.Read text а Predictions about the Future of Fashion.

Predicting the future of fashion can be as analytical as market research, or just speculative. Actual influences on fashion have typically stemmed from changing technologies, political events, and the creativity of certain individuals.

The manufacturing of clothes has always been affected by technological advances. The sewing machine revolutionized the clothing industry in the nineteenth century, and zippers altered clothing construction when they were perfected for use in the 1930s. In the early 2000s, technological innovations in fabrics influenced on how designers think about clothing, with textiles being developed that have properties unheard of in natural fibers.

The abilities of these high-tech fabrics to stretch to overwhelming sizes or change their structure according to temperatures inspire clothing designers and blur the lines between fashion and industrial design. The Italian firm Corpo Nove designed a shirt woven with titanium that reacts to shifts in temperature. Wrinkles in the fabric are released when the shirt is exposed to hot air. Another item from the firm is a nylon jacket with a cooling system.

Changes in communication also influence the styles of the future. A nylon jacket, manufactured by Industrial Clothing Design, a venture of Philips Electronics and Levi Strauss and Company, features a “fully integrated communications and entertainment system”.

Primarily the fashion designers, in their roles as creators, determine the course of fashion. As a result, clothing designers are often asked to look into the future. Over time, their ideas and themes relating to these predictions remain almost constant. Many of the predictions made were unlikely to be achieved in that short period: “Paco Rabonne predicts that the clothes of the future will be premolded, bound or welded—no longer will they be sewn”. Issey Miyake is one designer rethinking how to make clothes for the future. Miyake’s A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) features knitted tubes of fabric with markings for an outfit. When purchased, the fabric is cut by the wearer to make different articles of clothing. But ideas such as these are beyond the realm of mainstream fashion in the early twenty-first century.

One of the ongoing influences on fashion is the shift in women’s roles in society. Fashion designers look at these changes from various angles and possibilities: the approach of unisex or androgynous clothing; the working woman’s wardrobe as compared with men’s wear; or the validity of femininity now that women are supposedly equal. The result is a spectrum of styles that caters to a diverse group of women, yet retains many stereotypes.

Fashion continues to represent female sexuality, with pleats and bows and flowing chiffon, and at the same time it can be aggressive, with leather, corsetry, and body-revealing shapes.

The human body plays as integral role as the clothes for many fashion designers working in the early 2000s. The idea of clothing as a “second skin” is often discussed when designers speak of the future of clothing. This concept has yet to be achieved with the wearing of only body stockings, or as Jean Paul Gaultier predicted in 1982, we’ll just “spray on a latex body suit”. This idea of a second skin continues to interest Gaultier and other designers. For his Fall 2003 collection, Gaultier created patterned bodysuits, worn under clothes, including one outlining the body’s arteries. More often fashion designers attempt to mold the body into other shapes. While the concept differs little from bustles of the nineteenth century, the results found in the early twenty-first century differ greatly. As Walter van Beirendonck, the Belgian designer for Wild and Lethal Trash, said, “the body of the future will be different”.

How fashion designers will manifest their ideas depends partly on the changing structure of the fashion industry and the evolving needs, and demands, of consumers. There remains the ongoing question regarding the demise of French couture and the stimulus to fashion from street styles. In The End of Fashion, Teri Agins argues that street style, consumer demands, and profit making have changed and will continue to alter the fashion industry. Agins’s theories apply to the marketplace, fashion in the twenty-first century. They still belongs to the elusive world of luxury, status, sex, and glamour. While fashion is known to be fleeting, many predictions about its future are slow to arrive.