More
than £2 million investment has now been secured for innovation in the fashion
and textile industry over Future Fashion Factory’s first three funding calls. Future
Fashion Factory is a £5.4 million R&D partnership exploring and developing
new digital and advanced textile technologies to boost the design of high-value
creative products.
Thirteen
additional collaborative research and development (R&D) projects have been
approved in the programme’s third Innovation Funding Call, supporting
independent designers, heritage Yorkshire mills and fashion tech companies.
Each
project addresses a challenge identified by industry partners from Future Fashion
Factory’s community of over 270 fashion businesses and professionals, from new
AR/VR/MR experiences of high value fashion and textiles to more sustainable
materials and designs for outerwear and footwear.
Successful
projects in this call include:
A
new digital system for 3D-woven fashion design (Twelve Oaks Software)
An
AI-driven planning system for producing luxury fabrics (Abraham Moon &
Sons)
Customisable,
comfortable and effective British wool face coverings with defined filter
performance (British Wool)
Digital
technologies for lead-time and waste reduction in the colouration of luxury
fabrics (DP Dyers)
A
radical approach to more sustainable cotton production (hydroCotton)
High
quality virtual garment simulation from blockbuster movies to digital fashion
(Numerion Software)
A?sustainable?coloration
system to reduce the environmental impact of adding colour and pattern to
fashion products?(Rose Danford-Philips)
A
new advanced and circular material for watersports using nylon from waste
garments whilst mitigating micro plastic leaching?(RubyMoon Gym to Swim)
A
vegan, petroleum and freshwater-free alternative to down or polyester for
insulated clothing (SaltyCo)
Colour-based
machine learning to create new pathways for designers seeking inspiration in
visual databases (Visualist)
Closed-loop
manufacturing of customisable, sustainable, made-to-measure footwear
(Vivobarefoot)
Stephen Russell, Director, Future
Fashion Factory, said, “This year has presented a unique set of challenges for the
fashion and textile industry, requiring a raft of new solutions while
accelerating changes that were already underway, not least digitalisation.
“We
had a fantastic response to this funding call, which shows the appetite for
innovation among UK businesses. By supporting these exciting projects, we want
to pave the way for continued growth and resilience in the UK’s world-renowned
luxury fashion industry,†Russell added.