FASHION RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

The FR&T group focuses on the application of new technologies and their consequences on everyday life. We take a wide view of fashion as the “things” worn on the body, including when your phone or your iPad is in your bag. We look at these “things” in other ways; when they are in the closet, the systems that make them, and new expressions of wearing.

What if data was a material? What does data look like? What does data feel like? How do we blend it together with the wool, cotton, polyester, leather and other materials used everyday? How would we design with data? How do we wear data? What does data worn on the body say about the wearer? Fashion is in the process of digital transformation. The digital transformation of fashion opens up new perspectives and possibilities of materials, products, services and systems. In the FR&T group we make with data, study how it is worn and ask how the things we already we create data. We see a future with new aesthetics, comfort, capability and care. To more deeply understand data as if it was a material, we look at data from perspectives of making and wearing.

We focus on Future Means of Making to explore new ways of creating Fashion. We look at different ways of making the complete cycle of Fashion, from analyzing what people are currently wearing, to design, manufacturing, sales, and use. We explore the digitalization of fashion with hands on experimentation using emergent technologies such as digital fabrication, 3D virtualization, speculative branding, biological fabrication, artificial intelligence and product service systems.

The FR&T group also focuses on Future Ways of Wearing. We explore how people actively engage in wearing clothes and experiment with how people could wear clothes differently. Our award winning research investigate the social and environmental impact of fashion, it’s sustainability. In particular we experiment with solutions to issues of environmental preservation, sustainable development goals, and systemic change to the complete system of fashion.

Together with the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI), we work had to create the fashion professionals of tomorrow. We embrace the diversity of the people, places and resources involved in making and wearing fashion as our constituency. We respect our constituency and see them as change makers: technologists, disruptors, and guardians who become tomorrow’s designers, developers, art directors, instigators, influencers, innovators, branders, marketeers, and others roles we don’t have names for yet. We respect all our collaborators as co-makers and co-authors.

All of these peopled come together in our labs and studios (with novel research into data, making and wearing) to create a wholistic picture of the future of fashion. From this informed perspective we reflect on how Fashion will exist in our city, country and world in time frames ranging from one to one thousand years in the future. We are here to innovate fashion with practice based researcher. We define our time by making meaningful example that create the future of design, business, development, and branding.

Fashion Research & Technology worked dynamically with the eight research groups in applied research at the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS).