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Each direction has its own leaders who actively apply innovative technologies and materials when creating new collections and garments. These are companies engaged in the development of new textures and fabrics (such as Du Pont, Thinsulate, Sympatex, etc.), and manufacturers of sports and special clothing, and, of course, the designers themselves are innovators. It is enough to cite as an example the project of Nike, which announced the appearance of jeans in which you can play sports, or "smart" fabrics from Google, which can serve as an interface for electronic devices, smartphones and tablets.

The statistics given by Anush Gasparyan are also interesting: innovative technologies are used in men's clothing 2 times more actively than in women's clothing (16% vs. 8%, respectively), despite the fact that the volume of the men's clothing market is almost 2 times smaller than the women's clothing market. What is noteworthy is that one of the most "high-tech" types of clothing in terms of fabrics is a men's business suit, for which premium brands let innovative fabrics. At the same time, the use of innovative materials is also a kind of marker separating the luxury brand market from the mid-price segment.

Environmental friendliness and technologies for processing and recycling of garbage and plastic are important in the activities of fabric and ready-to-wear manufacturing companies. For example, Adidas has released a collection for swimming made of oceanic plastic. According to the official website of Adidas, plastic, industrial garbage and fishing nets are used for the production of professional equipment. Non-profit organizations and environmental activists help to catch garbage from the ocean, then it is subjected to mechanical and chemical cleaning. The result is a nylon base, then converted into threads. ECONYL® fibers, which can be infinitely processed without loss of properties, are intertwined into the fabric.

As for "high fashion" and luxury brands, companies in this sector also do not stand aside from the new trend: for example, the fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo has released a limited collection of silk scarves, in the fabric of which threads are integrated, obtained as a result of processing orange cake. What until recently was waste, today gets a new life: materials are reused, thereby preserving the environment. Moreover, it is becoming fashionable – both millennials and Generation Z positively perceive the efforts of corporations to care for and preserve the environment.

At the end of her lecture, Ms. Gasparyan spoke about another interesting area that I would like to consider in more detail, namely, the "splicing" of clothes with gadgets. This is the common brainchild of Levi Strauss & Co and Google, aimed at developing and using sensory fabrics in everyday clothing. As part of the project, it is planned to produce jackets with inserts made of sensory fabric. The denim jacket, which is supposed to be released for sale in 2017, looks quite normal. However, with the help of a sensory fabric sewn into the cuff, the user will be able to perform a number of manipulations to answer phone calls, control music, navigation, and so on. But everything will not be limited to this project: the companies have agreed to cooperate in the creation of "smart fabrics" capable of connecting any piece of clothing to the Internet and gadgets. It seems that we are really waiting for an era not only of "smart" houses, but also of "smart" clothes, and not in years or decades, but already now.

The topic of innovation in the fashion industry is really very multifaceted, and in the following articles we will try to cover in more detail new technologies and ideas in the field of production, retail and communications.

Of course, we will pay attention to measures to support innovative and high-tech projects at the level of the state and development institutions, as well as talk about the possibility of participating in Russian and international business accelerators.

Author of the text: Irina Karimova, head of the portal FashionEducation.ru , Senior Lecturer at the Department of Advertising Technology and Public Relations at Moscow Polytechnic University.

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