The fashion world is renowned for its creativity, and London Fashion Week is an opportunity for British designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Richard Nicoll, and Paul Smith to showcase their creations, as the fashion world waits to see what we will be wearing next season.

But for an industry that is dependent on the ‘new’ - be it new trends, designs, materials, or manufacturing processes – it frequently turns to the past for inspiration. Recently fabrics such as lace have been resurgent whilst influences from the ‘50s through to the ‘80s have all been evident on the catwalks and on the high street. A fact recognised by the recent BBC4 series ‘Style on Trial’ which examined fashion in each of the decades from the 1940s through to the 1990s.

AHRC-funded projects are helping the fashion industry to not only understand the history of fashion and the fabrics and textiles it relies on, but also looking at innovative new ideas and developing new materials, as well as working with fashion retailers on branding. Some examples of projects we have funded are listed below.

Considerate design for personalised fashion products: This project led by Sandy Black at the London College of Fashion, investigated the possibilities of mass customization in fashion, by creating viable products which are individually tailored to requirements. It used new technologies to develop new fashion products. It also developed new design processes aimed at reducing environmental impact whilst considering both the end user and the entire life cycle of the product. By focusing on the user it used body scanning and linked it to rapid prototyping methods. This produced customised body related forms, integrated with different direct manufacturing and production processes resulting in the production of seam-free knitwear, the manufacture of bespoke bags, and the creation of body conformable seamless textile structures.

 Charmed: Can jewellery tell us what we want from wearable technology: As technology develops and becomes more pervasive, this project investigates how interactive jewellery can be integrated into our lives. It investigated what it is ‘users’ want from the jewellery – in this case, charms. The project was then able to look at how it can be incorporated into users’ everyday wardrobes, in a way that allows an emotional involvement of the sort we might associate with ‘ordinary’ jewellery. The use of interactive jewellery in healthcare and as alternative communication are also being investigated. Read the case study on this project.

Scentient Beings: This project explored implanting smell technology into the multi-sensorial clothing, developing a living dress as a sensitive 'Smart Second Skin'. The dress mimics the body's circulation system, the sense and scent glands. The purpose of the dress is to help people feel better by providing a way of 'refreshing' their smell throughout the day, without having to carry a perfume bottle, in addition it could bring relief to the estimated 10 percent of the population suffering from allergic reactions caused by applying perfume directly to the skin. Read the case study on this project.

e-scent:Following on from the success of Scentient Beings, eScent® is a user-worn scent dispenser where the frequency and type of the scent delivery is flexible and determined by the user. eScent can be embedded in jewellery and smart clothing and offers the user an innovative 'mood fragrancing' experience, depending on personal needs and emotions. It can also protect the user by targeting small doses of insect repellent via a sound-activated sensor tuned to recognise the sound frequency of mosquitoes. A patent based on an intelligent mosquito device has been filed and ways to commercialise this along with other applications in aromatherapy (stress-reduction), fine fragrance for the fashion industry and drug delivery/healthcare are now being investigated. Read the case study on this project.

 The emotional wardrobe: As part of the Designing for the 21^st Century funding initiative, this project explored how the value of clothing and fashion can be extended through the integration of information and communication functions, informed by and informing new technological developments, and building on the traditional concepts of clothing and associated cultures as expressive and communicative medium that connects the body with our social world. Using clothing as a vehicle, the project aimed to inform as many people as possible of the importance of combining science and art in their everyday future lives. The project envisages a wardrobe that is future focused, that maps the conventions and cultures of fashion and clothing with integration of technology.

 Understanding the heritage of Nottingham Lace to inform contemporary design: This is a collaboration between Hand and Lock, who have an established international profile in the fashion field specialising in the design and production of handmade lace and appliqué work, and a doctoral student at Nottingham Trent University, which holds a historic collection of lace and with support from experts at the Natural History Museum. This project aims to explore the potential for the lace collection to support contemporary creative design whilst developing understanding of past patterns and techniques of production.

Investigating the Effect of Silk Weighting: Silk, as an expensive and luxurious fibre, is found in many important textile artefacts, including clothing, ceremonial dress, upholstery, flags, banners and tapestries. However, many of the historical silk items on show in historic houses, museums and collections are now in poor condition, and so their conservation is important to preserve cultural heritage. Metal salts used for ‘weighting’ silk have been implicated in the catastrophic degradation of silk, but there is uncertainty as to the precise role it plays, and if other factors may have a more significant effect. This project aims to find out how the metal salts interact with the silk fibres and how they go on to influence the future behaviour of the material.

 Criminal Clothing: Crenshaw Limited, the company behind fashion brand Criminal, worked with Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design on a project aiming to reinvent its product merchandising. Criminal Clothing is sold not only at their new flagship store in Covent Garden, but also by more than 1700 retailers so brand identity is key. The team at the university developed an engaging ‘in-store narrative’ using visual and interactive elements such as film, packaging, furniture and posters. The techniques underpinning this strategy were then integrated into formal merchandising approaches within Criminal.

Shopping Routes: Networks of Fashion Consumption and Display in London’s West End, 1945-1979: Part of the co-funded Cultures of Consumption initiative, the research from this project led to the exhibition ‘Sixties Fashion’ held at the Victoria & Albert Museum from June 2006 to February 2007 and displaying around 70 garments from the period. The project compares the Mayfair couture sector and the development of youth fashion in Soho, and demonstrates the ways that dramatically different dimensions of the London fashion scene grew out of longer industrial histories and wider geographies of production and supply. The project looked at the response to new consumer cultures including the development of the boutique in King’s Road and Carnaby Street in comparison to the architecture that emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s of the store as an integral part of the comprehensively developed centre. The influence of film at the time was also considered as well as looking at the histories of other fashion cities such as Paris, New York, Milan and Tokyo.

Image: Smart Second Skin, from The Scentient Beings project.