HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION
Technology is really sexy! For me it's better than a thigh-high split in a skirt."
Stella McCartney may have delivered the line with a laugh while onstage at Vogue's Forces of Fashion conference earlier this month, but one got the sense that she was dead serious. The British designer was onstage speaking about ethical and sustainablefashion, and she quickly drew a connection between treating the planet well and updating the industry's old-fashioned — and incredibly wasteful, toxic and polluting — production methods. To her, incorporating new technology into that equation is an obvious choice.
"The younger generations, this is like a no-brainer for them," she said. "If you're lucky enough to have a business, I think you have to approach it this way."
McCartney's not the only one looking to Silicon Valley for ideas that could help catapult her company to the cutting edge of both design and environmental preservation efforts. From startups using bacteria to naturally dye fabric to established industry players using chemistry to close the recycling loop, a whole host of new discoveries are cropping up. Read on to learn about some of the most exciting developments that have the potential to change the future of fashion.
To see the negative impacts that fabric dye can have on the planet, one need only look at the rivers in China and Bangladesh that bear the color of next season's clothing due to improper dye disposal. The amount of water waste involved in dyeing is also problematic.
"A cotton T-shirt requires approximately 700 gallons of water to grow, produce and transport, with 20 percent or more of that water used in the dyeing process alone," explains Natsai Chieza via email.
Chieza is the biodesigner behind Faber Futures and a designer-in-residence at Ginkgo Bioworks, where she is working on a method that uses bacteria-secreted pigments to dye fabric. The technique dramatically reduces water usage, requiring less than seven ounces of water to dye a one-pound piece of silk, and the pigment itself is naturally and non-toxically created by the bacteria. While there are still obstacles to overcome before the results Chieza is able to achieve in a petri dish will be replicable on a larger scale, the sustainable fashion opportunity is so great that she's confident there will be bacteria-dyed clothing on the market before long.
"Interventions that tackle both water use and chemical use in the textile industry are incredibly rare, so this is an area of development many are watching very closely," she notes.
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