AI Will Be Your Personal Stylist

Technology will continue to advance but it needs to serve the customers. We need to offer them a broad variety of brands and collections and in turn, we want to help them to find their perfect style. StyleSnap, which we have introduced for customers in the UK this year, is an AI-powered visual search feature available on the Amazon app that allows customers to discover inspiring fashion finds by simply uploading screenshots of looks they like.

Fashion, like every other industry, is evolving – and customers have an increasingly strong voice. Social media platforms including Instagram have certainly played a major part in this and will only continue to grow. The Drop is one of our latest innovations that ticks these boxes, offering a new fashion shopping experience that offers customers access to limited edition collections, designed by fashion influencers from around the world, with every piece made-on-demand once customers have placed their order.

In sum, that marriage of content and technology is really transforming the way people consume information, and how they shop for fashion.

The Suit Will Be Worn Like A Tracksuit

There has been a move away from formality even within the city over the last five years. On a basic level, men are not wearing ties. I think that shift will just keep moving further and further away from the traditional suit.

We’re getting a lot of clients now coming in who don’t necessarily have to wear a suit for work. But they want to wear one casually in the way you’d wear a tracksuit. They’re looking for that comfort. That will become a classic part of a man’s wardrobe over the last decade where the suit is worn in quite a different way to how it has been over the past couple of hundred years.

On a technical level, we’re seeing and I imagine this being normalised, a completely unstructured jacket with no canvasing and no shoulder pads so it’s just like a cardigan. It still looks sharp but you can separate it and just pair it with a T-shirt, trainers and drawstring trousers.

Whilst I think there are a lot of guys wearing that look already I think in 10 years that will just be the standard, the accepted look for men at all levels, with the idea that the rigidity has been completely removed from tailoring.

10 Big Predictions About The Next 10 Years Of Menswear

In his 1989 classic Back To The Future II, filmmaker Robert Zemeckis attempted to predict what the world might look like 30 years ahead and in fashion terms, he wasn’t massively far out. Self-lacing Nikes, automatically heated jackets, virtual reality shades – sure, they might still be in the prototype stage or not work as slickly as intended, but they’re there. We have them. We are the future.

The foundations of ‘our’ future, at least what we can reasonably expect to happen in the next 10 years, have been built already, it just depends on how far they’ll go. Artificial intelligence is taking over the way we shop online, clocking our purchasing habits for a subtle (or not so subtle) tailored shopping experience.

Global etailer Farfetch is helping develop a cryptocurrency that in some roundabout way could stamp out designer counterfeits. Luxury fashion overlord Gucci has created its own augmented reality platform that allows customers to try on its Ace sneakers. All three certainly show a pathway into what fashion gadgetry will be developed and around in 2030. So far, so Minority Report.

In terms of the actual fashion, past decades of style are likely to return, new brands will come into the sphere while old players will grow or flounder, and the rapidly changing work dress codes will have a huge impact on the suit. The sustainability agenda will play probably the most important role in fashion in the next decade, as recycling technology becomes proliferated among brands and designers. Expect all your rainwear to be made out of recycled fishing nets and milked bottles, basically.

But predicting this future, or the future of anything, is one best reserved for the people who are likely going to be at the forefront for pushing those developments. This is exactly why we’ve asked them, from designers and CEOs to people whose literal job it is to predict the future. No time-travelling DeLoreans just yet, we’re afraid.