Mass customisation of clothing: myth or reality

Citation

Stylios, G.K. (2010), "Mass customisation of clothing: myth or reality", International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 22 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijcst.2010.05822aaa.001

Mass customisation of clothing: myth or reality

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Volume 22, Issue 1

For most of us working in clothing technology being part of the 1980s boom of robotisation, the 1990s boom of the “computerised” cat walk and now the EU’S FR 7 mass customisation technology platform you would have thought that mass customisation of clothing would have by now been realised. Some in the industry can argue that the current online shopping opportunities is mass customisation, some others may say that we are moving in the right direction and not a few will blame the current economic downturn for not fully succeeding in this important area of development.

I personally believe that there has been good progress in most aspects that constitute mass customisation of clothing, but integrating them and using them for making one off “customised” piece of garment – using machinery that can respond to the demands of chosen fabrics and garment designs – is still not fully realised.

Problems acquiring size and shape data from customers, difficulties with draping of the cloth, faster computing, packaging and logistics may, to some extend been overcome, but fabric manipulation and most importantly garment manufacturing and the art of stitching in particular need more research and development. The latter is not a new finding, it was realised as far back as 1980/1990 and good efforts were made by EU countries such as the UK, Germany and France, the USA and Japan to make manufacturing equipment such as sewing machines for instance to respond with the changes of the characterisation of fabric by marrying fabric objective measurement with fabric spreading, cutting, sewing and pressing. Difficulties of fully realising these aims, the need of more cash for R&D and the encouragement of successive governments for industry to source labour intensive manufacturing from the Far East stopped this research, its funding and diluted the knowledge and expertise that had been accumulated at that time, by prioritising funding of research in other areas. I still have as souvenirs a couple of “intelligent sewing machines” in my lab gathering dust, from the leading research that we were doing at that time in “intelligent sewing environments” research that Pfaff through Bellow Machine Company were ready to commercialise, if they were not to be taken over by Singer. At that time, manufacturing of clothing, often referred to as the “rag trade” was portrayed as an anathema by government and the media.

Despair is not to be and three years ago hope with EU’s mass customisation technology platform brought excitement back, especially when new large projects like the “Leapfrog” were funded despite not being capable to recognise the existence of prior knowledge and expertise from earlier research.

International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology supports and promotes mass customisation; it is strategically important for its coverage and would consider dedicating paper copy related to recent research efforts. Volume 22 would promote technical papers of original nature in:

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  modelling;

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  measurement;

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  high performance fabrics and garments;

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  design, and of course; and

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  mass customisation.

We continue our refereeing policy and authors are invited to submit their original papers at no cost to them.

George K. StyliosEditor-in-Chief