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Cosmecuticals: The trigger to an injection of innovation in fashion to come?



A recent post posits that the time for Men in the Western world to give up the embrace of the beard is nigh. The author of that article probably hasn't noticed something interesting about the last 20 years of fashions evolution.

It is safe to say that starting around the turn of the century we haven't created any fundamentally novel innovations in fashion. Everything is some type of remix of what came before...I see this clearly when I walk down a street in Brooklyn or Manhattan or the Bronx.

Different people freely wearing what ever style era clothing they feel comfortable with, there is no clear distinction to clothing of 2015 as distinct from clothing of 2010 as distinct from clothing going back I'd say to about 2005. 10 years of relentless remixing of what came before rather than anything really new.

thick tie or skinny tie, fitted shirts or loose shirts, skinny jeans or bell bottoms...just walk through Williamsburg to see what the hipsters are wearing.

Everything. From every Era.

Over here some guy wearing plad!

Over there some girl in a hoop skirt.

Over here some guy in baggy 90's like grunge jeans.

Over there some girl in super colorful tights.

Same with hair and makeup...tons of mixing. thick eye brow on one girl, pencil brow on another sitting next to her on the train. Big 80's hair on one girl , next to short pixie crop from 90's (or mid 60's if you paid attention) on another girl. Now I am sure that depending on where you are population density varies the variety of fashion forms that can be found (a small town is likely to have very homogeneous fashion trends) but it is clear that the trend in large cities has moved toward any style as the norm, a rainbow mix of fashion from eras going back to Victorian times in some cases.

It's all rather fascinating ...I wonder if this is just a intermediate period before some sudden break into something completely unique and different emerges....possibly enabled by radical injection of technology into our fashion?

As I've written in the cosmecuticals chapter in the Future of Business book, the ability to change our hair texture and color will be a huge industry that there is a ton of demand to embrace, interesting novelty will be possible that is currently not possible once we can modify those genes in various non natural ways...and those will shape what designers come up with to compliment the new combinations of humanity that we'll be providing them as inspiration.

So that's my bet....that we are just at a point before a state transition occurs as enabled by this technology to come. Links: http://sent2null.blogspot.com/2014/02/cosmecuticals-are-closer.html http://sent2null.blogspot.com/2014/07/tyras-cloudy-fashion-crystal-ball.html

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Anonymous said…
Come chat about gene editing on the google group DIYBIO!
June 19, 2015 at 1:49 AM
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