Fashioning Sportswear

Somehow I ended up picking up a week old copy of the Standard on the tube, but was worth it to read this article on sportswear designers of the future. In recent years there has been an explosion in super hi-tech sports gear which compresses, maps, reacts or just tones your bum, but Olympics banned swimming costumes aside, I'm not massively convinced. What I am far more excited about is a development useful for the masses - performance features on everyday clothing.

Having been in London for a few years I've seen plenty of cyclists lugging in suit carriers to work, and the mysteriously ever popular womens black bike tights that become transparent once worn. I'm sure there must be a market out there for clothes like some of these which look good and yet also stretch, don't get caught on your bike chain, repel water and oil and generally prevent you from having to change four times a day. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of these graduates in the near future...

Trash Fashion

Visiting the Science Museum this weekend, hidden behind the astronauts I found there was a great little exhibition about sustainable fashion. Some fascinating technologies on display including a bespoke sweater that was knitted to a pattern made by 3D body scanners. This eliminates textile waste in the manufacturing process, and potentially means we can all enjoy a bespoke fitting wardrobe. I like the idea of carrying my vital statistics around on a swipe card - not only an incentive to lay off the pies, but the technology can also be used to allow us to try on clothes virtually - if you have ever become stuck in a garment in a shop changing room, this may be the technology breakthrough you've been waiting for.

Another section was on the use of dyes, which are one of the heaviest polluting parts of the garment industry and use a huge amount of water. In general textiles are woven first and dyed afterwards. This results both in uneven colouration across the fabric, and in the case of synthetics (which do not absorb dye) it becomes pretty messy, environmentally. A company called DyeCat has developed a new process where the catalyst used in making the synthetic material also contains a colour giving compound. This means that instead of adding dye over the top of the fabric, it is inherent in the fabric itself, making it completely colour fast. Less pollution, less water usage and maybe even an end to the red sock in the white wash dilemma.

Last Train Home

A documentary film following the lives of a Chinese migrant worker family over the course of two years, Last Train Home is a terrific if harrowing insight into the lives of factory workers. Parents Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin have spent the last sixteen years working in factories in Dongguan, several thousand miles away from their home village.

As a result they have hardly seen their two children, who have been raised by their grandparents. Giving up everything in order to make a better life for their children, their absence instead drives teenage daughter Qin to leave herself to join the factory workforce, leaving mother Chen to question whether their sacrifice was worthwhile.

However changes are afoot in China, the domestic market is thriving, and factories in Guangdong now lie empty while manufacturing chases labour to the north. It would be interesting to see how this family and others fare as we enter into the next 5 Year Plan.

Is British Best?

There was an interesting documentary on Channel 4 last night which followed the fortunes of Cooper and Stollbrand, a garment factory in Salford. I thought it was particularly poignant that while many bemoan the loss of our manufacturing industries to the far east and elsewhere, most of the younger members of the factory’s staff had come from outside the UK, and they feel that young British people are no longer interested in working in secondary industry.

At the same time, the factory was producing what looked like some beautiful garments, with the added benefits for retailers of quick sampling and lead times and a lot less in freight charges just to get it up and down the M1. Perhaps with the increasing cost of labour and shipping from the further reaches of the world, Made in Britain will become a familiar label again. Of course if you happen to be sourcing something like tweed or Italian leather for your garments, it might be easy to be based within the UK, but as long technical fabrics are being manufactured in countries like Taiwan and China, there will remain a big argument for keeping the cutting and sewing close by.