Ever wonder what you’ll be wearing in the future? Or what your g-g-great grandkids will be uploading onto their bodies? Most trend-sites look to the streets to see what’s due to translate into next year’s catwalk, but we’ve donned our time travel specs and looked 1, 10, 100 and even 1,000 years ahead. In this utterly realistic fashion forecast, we predict everything from i-jackets to neo-taxidermy. All in all, future fashion is set to be rather bleak, with Nike and Apple monopolizing the market…if you don’t want to know, then flip your visors down now.
1 – 10 YEARS FROM NOW…
TRASH: Trash is going to be hot. The fashion term ‘ready-to-wear’ will literally be translated into ‘wear anything to hand’. People will walk about in any old shit and somehow create street-worthy ensembles (in their minds). Case in point: “Where did you get that jacket?” “Oh this? It’s my carpet. I ripped it up this morning and threw it on. Real jackets are too first world.” And what will accessorise junk dressing? Use your imagination! Paper airplane hats, sanitary towel bracelets, paint for make-up, toilet roll turbans, hair extension scarves, fingerless crisp packet gloves. Naturally, there’ll be a divide between those mixing real junk with items of clothing, and those who’ll wear imitation designer junk, not wanting to get their hands dirty. Ideal foreco-arthole students, trendsetters and trend-followers.
i-jacket: Expanding their global pod monopolization, Apple will cause a major stir when it tickles Nike’s bollocks in the fashion-tech collaboration of the decade. Developing a ’portable media’ jacket with all the basic trimmings of an i-pad, you’ll be able to upload music, calendar and contacts as well as log onto the net via your sleeve. All this will be controlled by i-tunesspyware, safely stored in the hard drive of your breast pocket (with ear-buds exiting through the collar). The i-jacket will also feature pod-casts that can detect which shops you enter, thus bombarding wearers with suggested sales ‘tailored’ to your tastes and habits. And don’t forget, the i-jacket will come in 5 different rainbow colours, one for every personality in the world.
10 - 100 YEARS FROM NOW…
TAXIDERMY: Red or Dead will take on a whole new meaning as taxidermy permeates street-wear. In a sudden rush, Londoners will descend on East End Taxidermists and Vintage Junk shops, cleaning them out of exotic road kill. We’re guessing it’s got something to do with Kate Moss’s daughter Lila, who was spotted wearing a stuffed Hummingbird bird fascinator. It’s not long before the trend for tax takes over, translating into Haute Couture. Fashion Houses proclaim it ‘eco-fashion friendly’ to swap real fur for the ancient art of animal mummification, so long as every animal has naturally passed on. Pete Doherty (who’s surprised us all by staying alive this long) is seen wearing Prada’s latest creation – the Beaver Tail Tie. A year later, anything dead goes. Anything stuffed is stylish. If you’re not wearing road kill, you’re boring. Oh yes, and probably poor, since taxidermy tailoring is hyper-expensive. Best to stick with what you can dig up.
FUTURO FASHION: Moving into the event horizon, fashion hasn’t changed a great deal, except its all becoming digitalized. Ever since Mac invented the i-jacket, the inevitable copy cats have moved in and created their own, cheaper PC versions of ‘portable memory jackets’, aka PMJs. PMJs don’t exactly look suave and appear bulky, creating an eye-sore on the streets. The way we shop is effected greatly, with shops containing self service outlets with inbuilt computers to browse through instead of rails of clothes. Wearers of portable media jackets (PMJs), can plug directly into these computerized booths and upload their information into personalized shopping accounts. A wardrobe can be created, sized and tailored to your specs. Upon ordering an item, the computer will probably breakdown, or force you to “call for assistance” because there’s an “unexpected item in baggage area.” Yes, high street shopping has become even more spiritless and shit since the naughties. However, ready-to-wear shops and some haute houses will capitalize on stylish computerized programs, most generated by MACs, for a “shopping experience of the future”, taking after Dubai, Japan and China.
100 – 1000 YEARS FROM NOW…
SARTORIAL SCIENCE: Scientists, herbalists and alchemists work closely with fashion houses to develop organic free-range clothing that works with the human body and mind to offer us a better quality of life. To wear our health becomes the latest trend, but it’s more beneficial than fashionable. There’ll be a few random zany gadgets on the market, like TV Visors and Meditation Helmuts, but certain clothing will actually develop into long-term life sustaining items. Garmets will be designed to alleviate our moods through scents, sounds and electrical pulses. It’s not hard to imagine The House of Fraser collaborating with fashionable Chinese herbalist companies, developing shoes to absorb our toxic waste and cleanse our blood while we walk. Clothing as such might come as a miracle, but it won’t look it. Most of it looks a bit vanilla, not to mention geriatric or ‘John Lewis’. It’s not until years later when top fashion brands like Karen Elson and Zara influence the design process. SUPERSWEET reckons that hands will no longer be the main vehicle for digital equipment anymore, it’ll all be ‘wearable’ and interchangeable from one part of the body to the other. No wonder we need spiritual healing…
AVATARS: Nearing 1000 years from now, we really will be wearing avatars. Either that, or we’ll all be dressed like extras from The Fifth Element. We especially like to envision women holding a Chanel make-up box to their eyes and lazer-printing their make-up on. That’s all we got. We’re tired of imagining the future. Why does anyone want to live in the future anyway? Lets enjoy the here and now. Ohhh whatever.
Words: Tiffany Tondut
Illustrations: Esther McManus