When people imagine fashion technology, they tend to picture light-up dresses and smart jackets. The reality is less theatrical and more significant. The technologies reshaping clothes now are mostly invisible — in the supply chain, the fibre and the label.
The product passport
In the European Union, new ecodesign rules are paving the way for digital product passports: records, usually accessed by a code on the label, that describe what a product is made of and how to care for, repair or recycle it. For shoppers, it promises an answer to a question that has been hard to answer reliably: what exactly am I buying?
Better fibres
Research into lower-impact materials — recycled synthetics, regenerative cotton, fibres made from agricultural waste — has moved from the lab into commercial production. None of these is a silver bullet, and claims deserve scrutiny. But the range of options is wider than it has ever been.
Designed to be repaired
Perhaps the most practical change is a renewed interest in repairability: replaceable soles, spare buttons that actually match, garments constructed so they can be taken apart. It is technology in the broadest sense — the application of knowledge to make things last longer.
