"Fashion Futuring" - Designing for a Sustainable and Authentic Future

Source: Ylanite Koppens via pexels.com

The fashion industry, a colossal employer and a major driver of global consumption, stands at a critical crossroads. In this compelling episode of Signal Shift, Raakhee welcomes Dr. Clarice Garcia, a leading researcher and future strategist behind the innovative "Fashion Futuring" methodology. They dive deep into how cultural patterns, values, and even identity are intertwined with what we wear, and how these forces can drive systemic transitions towards regenerative futures. Dr. Garcia challenges the notion of sustainability as merely material changes, advocating for a profound cultural shift that redefines our relationship with clothing. From the alarming speed of micro-trends and the perils of digital fashion to the power of authenticity and small-scale activism, discover how "Fashion Futuring" inspires positive imagination and concrete action for a more hopeful and human-centered future in an industry that impacts us all.

"Fashion Futuring": https://www.fashionfuturing.com/

More info on Dr. Clarice Garcia: https://www.claricegarcia.com/

Selected Links:

• Amed, Imran, and Achim Berg. "What is fast fashion?" McKinsey & Company, 18 Mar. 2024, www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-fast-fashion.

• "Global Apparel Industry Statistics." UniformMarket, www.uniformmarket.com/statistics/global-apparel-industry-statistics.

• Kent, Sarah, and Diana Lee. The BoF Sustainability Index 2022. The Business of Fashion, 2022. insights.businessoffashion.com/products/the-bof-sustainability-index-2022.

Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Signal Shift with me, Raakhee. Our guest today is Dr. Clarice Garcia. Welcome, Clarice.

Clarice: (00:07)

Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here.

Raakhee: (00:11)

Dr. Clarice Garcia is a researcher, future strategist, and currently a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her work lies at the intersection of design, culture, futures, and innovation. And she recognizes cultural shifts as opportunities for innovation, particularly innovation that supports sustainable futures. She's done work for clients such as Uber, Google, YouTube, Nestle, Unilever, Ford, and many, many more.

She's done collaborations with UNDP and Forum for the Future. And it's her practice-based doctoral research at RMIT University Australia that culminated in the development of a futures thinking methodology titled Fashion Futuring that imagines the evolution of cultural patterns with fashion used as the central theme or example. This method provides the opportunity to engage with design fiction, material culture and future studies to understand how cultural beliefs, narratives and worldviews can create systemic transitions towards regenerative futures. So I would encourage anyone listening to open up Clarice's website, which is fashionfuturing.com right now, get a good sense of her truly exceptional work. It's really phenomenal. And I think it'll be a great accompaniment to this episode to understand that work and what we're talking about. 

So thank you again Clarice for being here. We truly appreciate your time. We are wrapping up a theme around future careers and jobs with this episode. And listeners would know we've focused on speaking to many designers throughout the series. Some about how the design of spaces will transform work. Others about how not having an office is changing foundational ideas about what people think work should even be. And we've explored very intriguing careers in food and design. We looked at future skills and even different income models. And bringing in fashion and fashion futuring just seemed to make a lot of sense to kind of wrap up the series. I think what we'll explore today, people may not have thought about or seen something like this. I'm very excited to bring this to people's attention, really, and say, wow.

What an interesting methodology and way to think about all of this. And I think, you know, for those listening as well, I think the importance of this is, reading on McKinsey feature from earlier this year, more than 300 million people work somewhere along the clothing value chain, from production to retail stores, to support of work, like advertising, packaging, and even modeling. And a report by Uniform Market places the number even higher. It says about 430 million people make up this work. So that's 11.9 % of the total global workforce. Fashion accounts for a lot of the jobs that we all partake in. And I think Clarice's work aims to impact the industry and that industry's evolution is going to evolve the nature of jobs and careers in this industry.

Clarice: (03:17)

So I guess one of the challenges that we have is exactly that. It's just that it's not feasible or possible just to think, okay, in current days, fashion could not exist or should not exist at all. I think that we should depart from the point that actually fashion as an industry is not just responsible for the levels of pollution it is, which is very concerning, of course, but it's also very much responsible for, you know, for lots of lives as well. You know, like there are lots of people involved in this industry from different backgrounds, different geographies, different levels of income, different, as you said, like different jobs as well. So I think that our role is kind of to rethink, okay, how can we transition the fashion industry into something really sustainable? As it is now, I'm afraid to say that fashion is not and cannot be sustainable as it is now in the models that we have.

So it should be a collective effort in transitioning different roles across the industry, but also like the meaning that fashion has within culture.

Raakhee: (04:31)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think we'll jump into all of it as the conversation flows. But I'd love to start off kind of at the top with ⁓ what drew you into wanting to explore fashion? Because you do come from the world of trends and working with broader concepts and outside of fashion. But I think you chose to bring that all into fashion and futures. And yeah, I'm just intrigued. Why did you choose that?

Clarice: (04:56)

Absolutely. I think that's a very good question. Well, as a trend forecaster working in different industries, as you said, like in the last 14 years, what I see is just that fashion is the worst case scenario when we think about replacement of goods and trends and the speed of change in terms of trends. So if we consider, for example, electronics, we'll see that, like, generally speaking, a phone will change every year, but the fashion industry is changing now, not even like in a couple of months, it's changing weekly, right? So the micro trends is just floating around on TikTok and everything. And it's just like turning the speed of fashion and consumption therefore very, very high. And I was like, well, ⁓ this is definitely the worst case scenario when we think about trends consumption and the obsolescence of styles and taste.

But the other reason to choose fashion is because I come from, I have a multiple multidisciplinary background. So I did a bachelor's in architecture and then I moved to Italy where I studied fashion design and also trend forecasting over there. So I started as a trend forecasting in the fashion industry and I've been my entire life very intrigued by design and aesthetics and the look and feel of products. And I think that they are very seductive. think that as consumers, well, ⁓ we tend to just replace them very fast because it's not just because they don't work anymore, but just because we don't feel like having them anymore. And, but after like, more than 10 years in this industry, just realized that regardless if it's trends for fashion or electronics or cars or whatever it is, or even entertainment, what is actually moving us across this industry is like the need to produce novelty. And I think that which is like the the foundation of fashion in a sense that fashion not just as clothing, but fashion as change, fashion as culture. So what we see around is actually this idea that we have an industry that is producing faster as well. So we have like more dynamic mechanisms and manufacturing stuff and processes and all of this that are just kind of turning production faster. And therefore this industry has to ensure that we are also consuming what they can produce faster at the same speed. So it's not just that consumers are consuming more. It comes actually from the other side.

When we look around in the future and we look forward, we probably can envision, as we are seeing in AI across any field in any sector, it's just like that this fast-paced speed will probably be even faster. And therefore, are we still as this industry relying on the capacity of consumers to replace things at the same speed?

And if so, what is the future of the Earth?

Raakhee: (08:24)

it's, I think about as the average person, we're willing to recycle and we change our food habits. And I feel like all of that is done with a lot more ease than us giving up our clothing.

Tied into identity, I guess, right? And how we show ourselves in the world and so much around that is fashion

Clarice: (08:42)

And it is something very interesting we as consumers, are also like trapped or somehow implicated in this industry as well.

It crossed my mind when I was running one of my workshops and people said, well, I think that fashion shouldn't exist anymore in the future. but, and then if it doesn't, so what happens will be all in uniforms, just wearing our white t-shirts. And this is actually, for example, an image that is very much conveyed in dystopian movies, for example. So we have, you know, everyone is dressed as like the same. 

So it's like, it's about erasing identity. It's about erasing self-expression. And it's about this uniformist society that we also don't want to have. We want to have plurality of ideas, of aesthetics, of, you know, expressions and values as well. so I think that and then it comes back to the question, which is like, okay, so how can we shift this industry? to a more positive and sustainable future that is not necessarily only about thinking into biomaterials or reducing waste, which are of course very much important. But I think that what is actually one of the most intriguing and important points in that system is how fashion is actually, what fashion actually represents within culture and why are we putting so much meaning into this stuff we wear is probably a crisis of, you know, of values across society in general that is now pretty much driven by image as like it's been for a while, but now with Instagram, TikTok and all the image that we want to convey on social media, for example, it's been even more important to show off yourself in a certain way. concerning thing is that we are showing us off in different ways and it cannot be stable. It has to change. It has to be updated.

So we actually selling ourselves as objects as well. It's not just we are part of this industry as subjects. It's not just about what we wear, but we also selling our identities as well somehow through imagery. So yeah, and fashion plays a big role on that.

Raakhee: (11:19)

What makes this such a challenging space for transformation. think to your words early on, it's going to take all of us to create this change. But I know that your tool is designed to really help people work with it so that from it can emerge an understanding of what are these values, right?

And who are we and what are these cultural beliefs and maybe creating new ideas around values and cultures. But working with so many people around this and groups, have you noticed anything? Mean, what have been interesting observations around societal values and challenges? What are you discovering as you work with this?

Clarice: (12:01)

I engaged more than 100 people across the world in fashion, featuring probably around 200 people so far. there is something very, very important to consider that is like the collective and the individual aspect of values. And sometimes those values, are clashing, right? So when I talk about fashion in the collective space, what I see is that people, you know, they value like sustainability, they value a more shared future, they value, I don't know, recycling, they value those things. But when we look at the individual aspect of what fashion represents in people's lives.

What people say a lot is that they value fashion because it is a form of self-expression, for example. Right? The problem with that is that it goes exactly into how the world is put out, which is the self. It goes into the self. It's about me as an individual. It's not about the collective. And I think that that's the most challenging point when we talk about shifting values for people that are, you know, involved in the fashion industry somehow, or even consumers, because in a collective scale, I might think, no, that's OK. I want to be more sustainable. I can wear more long lasting garments. I can ⁓ make better choices and buy recycled materials and things like that. And that's perfect. But the problem goes when we when we look at the individual values and they come to, I just want to play out with my image. I want to have fun. I want to express myself. I want to use colors. I want to play with the trends. I want to be recognized by my peers in a certain way. I want to have options. And so how can those two worlds? be aligned, right? And it's not an easy answer either. It's not.

But I think that what fashion futuring aims to do at least is to shed some light into those contradictions. I think that's the first thing. And it is also like, because it's a thing of like, can we, when we think about the future, it's not just the future as something distant, as something that one day I'll see it happening, it flourishing. It's not that. The future is now, right? The future is now more than ever.

But the thing here is kind of to consider that it's not that distance between the now and the future, and it's not that distance as well between the individual and the collectiveness. So when we, if we start to think about everything we do in terms of bridges, how we bridge present, past and futures, how we bridge individual and collective, how we bridge imagination and action, then we start maybe to see new paths to change things into a more profound and core way rather than just in the surface level.

Because what I think today is that what's happening in the fashion industry in terms of sustainability is that we are doing definitely some changes. The changes are in the way, but the changes are mainly going into the fashion as a material thing. It's going into the materiality of fashion, not in the cultural aspect of it. So we are talking about green products, organic materials, sustainability risks that goes into recycling, reducing waste, pattern making to reduce waste, all those things, they are amazing. But they are all talking about materiality aspect of fashion. For example, in the sustainability index, it classifies actions and change towards sustainability across six impact categories, which are transparency, emissions, water, chemicals, waste materials and workers.

And it's in the business of fashion in a document produced in 2022. But in this framework, culture is not there. And then my question for us is, what is the role that fashion plays in culture? Because in the past, when we look in the past, in the 19th century, fashion has a very, very particular role, which was to show off status and class division. It was about distinction, class distinction. But now fashion is about the idea of let's play with that. Let's have fun. Let's, you know, consume and dispose and it's cheap and it's, you know, it is like it is everywhere and we don't have to, you know, we don't have to think that much.

And my question is, how can we put culture into place?

Raakhee: (17:03)

And I don't know if this has come up in anything you've ever done. But do you think it's?

Digital fashion might help. Might be a solution that maybe we use it for creative expression and we need less in real life?

Clarice: (17:18)

No, I don't. It's a big no for me. I think that this is just the digital fashion is just a way of the market to capture fashion somehow and to make more money of it we are still dressed, we'll be still going around. And it's just it is a plus. It's an extra in consumption rather than the opposite. 

I am every every time I hear someone saying the future of fashion might be digital. So we are not using stuff anymore. I tend to think that it's probably just a lazy answer to a complex problem. And for me, it's just a big no. It's just a market capturing and making money out of something new. So instead of just selling clothes, real clothes, we are selling also these two ones.

In producing through this play, the sense that I can consume more and therefore I probably might be consuming also more into real life as well. I think it's the opposite. It's the opposite role it's playing. It's playing a role of instigating novelty and consumption at another level. So I, yeah.

I'm against this thinking that's like, the future of fashion should be digital and therefore it will solve our problems. It will not. And it's naive to think about that.

Raakhee: (18:48)

You're absolutely right. I can imagine the first place it'll be used is for advertising, to your point, to get us to just buy more. Because, know, that's yeah, I can try on five outfits and I'll buy 10.

Clarice: (18:59)

The change can happen only if we reassess our values, individual and collective ⁓ at once, and we really take them into consideration. Because, for example, in running fashion futuring workshops, lots of groups, talked, for example, about care as a value, taking care or the sense of protection, the sense of sharing, all those things. were values that people put out as values for the future, right? And it was very interesting because one of the groups, they end up creating a pair of shoes that were actually like made with, I don't know, algae, blah, blah, blah. But then the story was that the pair of shoes should be actually eaten by fish, in flooding scenarios. So the pair of shoes could be, you know, could serve as food to other beings as well. But also they talked about this concept that the shoes, if you are growing algae on your feet, you are actually growing your shoes as we grow plants in our houses, right? And to grow a plant, you have to take care of it. You have to really go there and see and check and put some water and it cannot be too much water and all those things, right? 

So it's this commitment of care. And this was like one thing that stayed in my mind, like just like was so powerful. If fashion in the future, if it might be about taking care rather than self-expression, this is a… powerful and radical change in everything. So if the value is more about taking care rather than profit, rather than the self, then we might change and we might see big changes in manufacturing. How can we take care of people working in manufacturing? How can we take care of mental health in the audiences looking at, you know, this advertising paces on TikTok,

So if it's about taking care, what does it change in terms of policies, in terms of design principles?

Raakhee: (21:21)

I love that. a beautiful example. Gosh, I'm just imagining this algae shoe and just a different relationship with this product that is so important to us. So we should nurture because it carries us literally.

Clarice: (21:36)

Definitely, yes, right.

Raakhee: (21:39)

I guess I want to kind of take the conversation now into the more imaginative space and helping people see the kinds of opportunities that they are or they can help create. So anybody who wants to work in these careers.

What are some of the interesting narratives, even artifacts that have come out through this work? Is there anything else you can share? That was an amazing example.

Clarice: (21:58)

There were so many. There were one example that were actually, created, like the participants created a garment that was able to read all those emotions beforehand. And therefore it was actually helping people to connect into an affectionate level. And it was a garment to actually fight against loneliness, right?

So if we think that we might have, know, like if we think again, if you think as like as fashion as a medium to that is actually intermediating social relationships, know, interpersonal relationships, more than just the image itself, it could be very powerful. But another example this artifact that was actually a piece, a sort of necklace that was like a sort gene editing piece to help people to incorporate some skills that just animals have. As, for example, being able to see in long distances or to smell things into long distances and things like that, which was a piece for survival, but also a piece that would help us to connect and to understand other beings as well. So then the question that they raised was, could fashion be also like a medium to make us interpret understand and connect with all the beings rather than just human beings, right?

And it's so powerful when we hear people talking that they want a garment that senses all those feelings as well as a way to connect with each other. We actually, talking about something that is very, very old school in terms of fashion theory, which is like just recognizing your peers by the way they look, right? Which is like, for example, what happened with the punk movement. So they had their aesthetics that helps them to identify and to reassure the values as well as punks, right?

Ultimately, fashion futuring is a tool for imagination, but also to bridge imagination with concrete action. And I don't think we have a crisis of imagination. I think we have a crisis of positive imagination.

Raakhee: (24:37)

Yeah.

Clarice: (24:38)

We can easily imagine dystopian futures, right? Everyone can easily imagine them, but can we imagine positive futures? And I think that's the goal and the role for futurists or foresight practitioners as well and all the people that are into this space.

And one of the most interesting things that I also noticed during the fashion featuring workshops was actually that, as I said before, the future is never detached from the present, neither from the past. It is an ongoing thing. They are connected.

Raakhee: (25:10)

How should people be thinking about this industry, the work and carving out even maybe unique opportunities for themselves over next years because we, know, the same time we met with AI, which of course everybody's like, that's taking my job, that's, you know, and then there's fashion, which is a little bit of a, it's a different realm. I don't know, I don't know what it's going to look like, what the impact of AI is going to be there, but what do you think ⁓ over the next 10, 15 years, what does work look like in this industry? And particularly for young people who are maybe going to enter, like, where should they even look? What should they I don't know what you there, aspire to..

Clarice: (25:49)

I think they should be very, very much kind of attached to the power of authenticity. There is something that AI cannot replace, which is human creativity. What AI can do is to replicate things, to change things some here and there. And it's probably the… being authentic, being creative, being pretty much unique is what probably will have more value in the future. That's one thing that I think about. But the other thing is kind of

I guess creating spaces or thinking not just into being cooperated by this system as a whole as it is. But I think that even if you have to work because you have to, you know, to a big company because you have to pay your bills, I think that every designer or strategist or, you know, makeup artist, whatever they are, I think they should create spaces for local and small-scale activism in fashion. I think there is so much power into small scale initiatives and I think that lots of changes we see in culture, they happen from the fringes, right? And I think that they should be connected to all the independent designers. I think there is lots of value into the local fashion, into the local identities.

There is so much being erased by global companies in terms of aesthetics or meaning. Everyone looks the same. I had a friend that she was saying, what happened with the world is just everything is cream. And then she said, it's because of the Kardashians. And I don't want to buy anything cream. I don't like it. Right?

And everywhere you look around, everyone is in cream. And why is that? And it is not because we don't want to wear color. It is because what is available in the stores made at large scale are cream because they are made for this. are made for makers believe that this is trending and this is therefore how we should be wearing clothes, which is not.

And I think that in the age of AI that we'll see in the future, which is like this massification of thinking, I think there will be as a contradiction and as a very powerful trend, let's put like this, it's the trend of authenticity. How can I be myself? How can I be human before anything? And so I think that for new people entering in this industry or, like passionate about fashion, I would recommend those things. Keep your local communities, your small communities, keep thinking, keep sort of activism. Things will change. And I think that we should find our peers where we could share ideas and cultures just change when we share ideas with others. So keep this in mind and also keep the authenticity in first, in first place.

Yeah, and I think that it's challenging, right? I'm not saying that it's that simple.

In the age of AI, we might see less jobs for designers. We might see less jobs for textile engineers, textile producers, textile. We might see less jobs for pattern makers. And I think that's the reality.We might see this big value emerging, which is about the authenticity and that's something that is made by a human being from the beginning to the end.

Raakhee: (29:53)

Absolutely, and valuing and wanting to have those things made by humans.

Clarice: (30:00)

Exactly.

Raakhee: (30:00)

Clarice. any parting thoughts?

Clarice: (30:02)

I think that what I would suggest also like to, you know, to future designers or even like anyone working like, you know, professionals, I guess, is to kind of to not miss hope, to not lose hope, to not be, you know, to not be just like to keep some kind of optimism.

I think that we are living in very grim times. But if we look back, we also see how humanity evolved in so many ways. And I think we have some power of being together, of thinking together, and fighting together for better futures for everyone. And just let's not give up. I think that's my last comment.

Raakhee: (30:55)

Thank you so much for those parting words and for everything you shared today. It's been an amazing conversation to everybody listening. Thank you so much for being here and listening and watching. And please like and leave us your comments and your questions around fashion and fashion futuring and please really do have a look at the website. You'll see Clarice's fantastic work. It is so exciting. It's really excellent. So to our listeners, thank you for being here and bye for now.