← Clotheshorse with Amanda Lee McCarty
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- [00:00]
Amanda
Did you have a kid in your class who always started every book report or presentation with a quote, or if not a quote, maybe a definition from Webster's Dictionary? I definitely grew up with a kid like that.
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Dustin
His name was Darren.
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Amanda
And, you know, while we moved around a lot while I was a kid, we stayed in the same place, or at least the same school district from fifth grade through 10th grade. And in middle school, kids started to be segmented by the track they were on. I don't remember what the other tracks were at my school because, you know, I was like 13, full of myself, and really, really busy worrying about whether or not I would ever go through puberty. But I do remember that I was in the college prep track, and that meant that all of my classes were with the same kids for years. We were all, at least in theory, destined to roll into college after graduation. And these are the kids that I remember most from my tween and teen years, even if, you know, I haven't really been in touch with them in adulthood. And there was always this kid who, year after year, his name was Darren, started every report with either Webster's defines blank as blank or a quote, something like, she had dumps, like a truck. Truck. Truck thighs like what, what, what? All night long. Let me see that thong. Cisco said this in 1999, and this is my report about the invention of underwear. Okay, well, none of his stuff was as good as Cisco, but I do remember him doing a book report in eighth grade on tales of a fourth grade nothing. And he started it with like, I don't know, like Albert. Albert Einstein once said, what goes up must come down. That was probably a different scientist anyway. And then he rolled into this book report of tales of a fourth grade nothing. And I was like, wow, like, it really works. He made it work. Still, I've always been really apprehensive about starting anything that I've ever written anywhere with a quote because, you know, it feels like seventh or eighth grade to me. But today we're going to get started with some quotes that ultimately proved to be a bit, I don't know, short sighted, wrong, embarrassing. You decide. Okay. First, in 1903, an unnamed president of Michigan Savings bank told Henry Ford's lawyer, whose name happened to be Horace Rackham. He said, the horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad. And I think it's good that this guy, this president of Michigan Savings bank lives on, on the Internet, unnamed, because, wow, he was super duper wrong. Okay, in 1946. Darryl Zanuck, an executive at movie studio 20th Century Fox, said television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Well, Mr. Zanuck, by the way, heard this guy is a real piece of work, a real jerk. Mr. Zanuck, I have to tell you that not only are we all watching a lot of television all the time, there are multiples in many households and they're, like, made of plastic now. No more wooden televisions. Anyway, Daryl Zanuck, okay, 1981 inventor Marty Cooper said cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems, meaning we'll always be using landlines. Oh, and by the way, Marty Cooper literally invented the cell phone. So maybe he was just being modest or, I mean, maybe he had a really cool, like, Mickey Mouse phone that he wasn't ready to let go of. Because I'll tell you, we went to a flea market this weekend, and there's so many good novelty phones. It really did make me miss, miss the landline. I also miss having to, like, stretch the cord around corners and through doors to get a private moment on the phone. Okay, so, Marty Cooper, inventor of the cell phone, also wrong, right? In 1995, Robert Metcalfe, literally one of the early inventors of the Internet, said, I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996, catastrophically collapse. I mean, poor Robert Metcalfe, not only was he wrong, he was missing out on how much time people would spend being mean to each other in the Internet just 10, 15 years later. No one wants to be on the wrong side of history and then, you know, be quoted about it forever on the Internet. And I, as a person who has always loved technology and has often been an early adopter when I could afford it. I do not want to be the person who drags my heels or shuts down conversation about technological advancement, especially when we are facing so many crises all at once that could maybe be helped by technology. Like, I do believe that technology and new invention are going to be a key component of fighting climate change and so much more. So I don't want to be the guy, the unnamed president of the Michigan Savings bank who says, oh, cars, they're never going to catch on. We're going to be riding horses for the next thousand years. I mean, I wish, I wish I had a horse, obviously, but I don't want to be that person who sees a new form of technology comes along and poo, poos it dismisses, it says it's not the solution that we're looking for. And over the years, people haven't just said that television and Internet and cell phones and cars weren't going to catch on. People said that no one would ever shop online. People said that no one would shop from a catalog even. People said that we didn't need telephones, that we would prefer to just continue to send telegrams. I mean, I could go on and on. And there are always different times in history where there's a huge left turn driven by technology. Right. And we kind of have been in the midst of that for the last 20 ish years with cell phones replacing landlines and Internet, kind of changing how we do everything from socialize to shop to meet romantic partners, pay our bills. We don't even really go to the real bank anymore. You know, our lives have been wildly transformed by technology, and it seems that the technological advances are coming faster and bigger. Right. Earlier this year, when German slow fashion organization Fashion changers asked me to speak at their annual conference, well, first I was honored. I mean, how is it that this cancer kid from a trailer park in a small town in Pennsylvania was known by people in other countries? Yes, I. I was pretty famous around fourth grade at the York Haven Town library for reading the most books that summer. But that was as far as my fame or notoriety had ever stretched for a really long time. So imagine people in another country knowing who I am and imagine being known and respected enough to speak at a conference and be featured in their magazine. How amazing is that? Like, people have written about me in a language that is not English. I. I still can't believe it. It's definitely something I never saw happening. And sometimes I just like to take a moment to say, like, hey, I'm pretty proud of myself for working really hard and trying to do the best job I can and sticking at it even when I wanted to quit. And that's one of those times. So for my presentation for fashion changers, I was asked to speak about AI and how it could or could not benefit the fashion industry. The theme I was given for my presentation was fashion and generative AI between hype, backlash, and opportunity. And this was a great opportunity personally for me to dig into some research and learn a lot about something kind of new to me, Generative AI and how it could fit into something I know really well. Like, you know, how the fashion industry works. And like, a lot of things I have learned about for clotheshorse and really kind of in my life, I started hopeful that maybe AI could be a solution to the many issues plaguing fashion. But what I learned along the way made me more and more skeptical. So today I'm going to walk you through the presentation with a lot more detail and share what I learned. I don't consider myself an expert on AI, but I definitely fancy myself an expert on today's fashion industry. And I want to show you what I learned, why I'm concerned, and how all of us need to be involved in what happens next. And I'm going to do my best to not be the guy who said we're never going to drive cars, we're always going to ride horses. Welcome to Clothesh, the podcast that wonders when artificial intelligence can start washing dishes and mowing the lawn for me so I can have more time to do fun, creative stuff or at least get some sleep. I'm your host, Amanda, and this is episode 216. Today we're going to be unpacking how AI could mitigate the impact of the fashion industry, how it's actually being used right now, and how, unsurprisingly, solving fashion's problems is going to require a lot more than just an app. Too bad. So sad. Basically, we're going to ask, is this all hype or is it something real? Before we jump in, I just want to remind you that I am taking off for Japan this Tuesday. Basically, probably as if you listen to this episode, the day this comes out, the next day I'm literally going to be on a plane. I'll be recording some mini episodes in Japan about things I'm learning, seeing, thinking about while I'm there. If you happen to live in Japan or are going to be there while I am there, which is the month of November, holler at me. Maybe we can meet up. No promises. I have a pretty wild itinerary planned. And I'm also going to be working the whole time I'm there, but if I can meet up with you, I would love to. So yeah, I'm going to be working on these episodes and they'll be part educational, part personal experience. They'll be coming out at very strange times, most likely because Japan is always about a day ahead of North America. And I'll be uploading the final edited files to my Google Drive for Dustin to then download, mix and re upload while we're on like opposite schedules. So who knows how that process will work out. So just stay patient while I'm gone. No new orders will be shipping out from the clothes horse merch store. But all of the new transfer and sticker designs will be going up for pre order this week, most likely once I land in Japan. And you can order those and the existing designs to be shipped to you when I return the last week of November, which is really not that long from now. All right, let's jump in. Fashion must change its ways. Clear data about the impact of the fashion industry is always difficult to find because the industry is so complex and it overlaps with many other industries. Think about it. We've got agriculture, like, this is where cotton's coming from, right? We've got oil and gas. Like, you know, making synthetic fabrics requires fossil fuels. It's like the main ingredient. We've got logistics, airplanes and boats and trucks and trains and ports. And I mean, getting fashion around the world is so complicated. So that means all the data that we do know about the fashion industry is what I would call directional, meaning gives us an idea of the scope of fashion's impact. But it's not necessarily like this is 100% exactly the statistic. There's enough there for us to know that things are concerning, though. The fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 8 to 10% of global carbon emissions, which is more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. This is not surprising now that we know the vast majority of clothing is shipped around the world, from factory to warehouse to customer via airplane. The global fashion industry produces about 150 billion garments every year, and somewhere between 15 and 45 billion of those garments are never sold. And we never know the exact number of how many garments were made, much less unsold, because the industry just does not communicate this stuff. And they don't have to. But we do know pretty solidly that 30% of the clothing that is made is never sold. And this problem is called over production. And we're going to talk about overproduction in a variety of moments during this episode. So it's important to me to explain to you where this overproduction begins. One is that buyers chase the wrong trends. When you are a buyer, you worry constantly that you are buying the wrong thing, because if you buy the wrong thing, you will never hear the end of it, right? And it's very, very scary. Now, buyers, and I speak from experience as someone who was a buyer for a very long time, buyers aren't just randomly making decisions about what to buy, right? They are actually looking at sales data, customer data, all kinds of information to make these decisions. So it's not just, o, that's cute. Let's Just buy it. But nonetheless, sometimes you buy the wrong things. It could be that someone else beat you to buying that thing and everyone already has it. It could be that that trend came and went too fast. It could be that it was too soon. That if you had waited another year to bring in that item, it might suddenly be understandable to your customer. That happens all the time. One thing my friends and I who work in fashion talk about is how we're always like one or two years ahead of what everybody else is into at any given moment. And so sometimes we bring it in too soon because we thought everyone else was there with us. Or by the time that thing is like on trend and people want it, we're like so over it that we don't want to design it or buy it. So there are many ways in which a buyer could buy the wrong things. Another source of this overproduction is design teams not having enough time or staffing to catch major fit and quality issues. Time, time, time, time. I feel just like as a human, I don't have enough time to do anything that I want to do. And I feel like time is this amazing resource that we never get enough of. And such is the human existence, I guess. But when you're working in one of these corporate offices as a designer or production person or even a buyer, the thing that you absolutely never have enough of is time. Because companies have shortened the window for development, design, and buying of products because they are so afraid of buying into the wrong trend by buying it too far in advance. Meaning also designing it too far in advance. It's so silly, right? But when I say it out loud, but that's really what happens. And so because everybody is rushing through the design and production and buying process, this is where we get buyers buying the wrong things. Things that don't fit, things that are weird, things that are completely unsellable because there was no time to get them right. And we talked about this, I think it was last year I did a whole series about sort of the history of fast fashion, the progression of fast fashion. If you haven't listened to those episodes before, you should definitely go give them a listen because I think it will make this episode make even more sense to you. And I'll be sure to include a link to those in the show notes. So how fast has product development, design, buying?
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Dustin
How.
- [17:26]
Amanda
How much has that sped up? Well, I'll tell you. Early in my career, the pre fast fashion era, we had six months, sometimes eight months to develop a style. And that meant that there would be multiple samples, multiple fittings, a lot of feedback back and for. And the factories themselves were not allowed to go into production until the item was, like, perfect. Right? And that takes time. Sometimes we would have to go through three, four, five samples and notes and fittings to get it there. When you have six or even eight months to do that, that's plenty of time. Well, at my very last fast fashion job, we had one to three months. And in fact, we were often encouraged to buy stuff in the same month it was going to deliver so that we 100% would not be out of trend. And having half as much or even less than half as much time to get something right means that most likely it will never be right. And what happens is more and more product ends up being unwearable, unusable, unsellable, being damaged out, meaning, like burned, destroyed before it even hits the sales floor. But of course, stuff still gets through, and customers reject it because they're like, I can't get my arm in the sleeve, or the fit is so strange, or something about it is so wrong. And ultimately that stuff ends up in the landfill, too. So just the speed of it all resulting in a lot of this overproduction, all this wasted time and resources. Okay, so we're going through here, in case you lost the thread. Is that like a sewing pun? I'm not really sure. Anyway, we're talking about the causes of overproduction, right? So we talked about buyers buying the wrong things. We talked about design teams, production teams, everyone just not having enough time to get it right. But those aren't the only reasons. Brands are also over buying, like, knowingly buying more than they could ever sell in order to get better pricing and meet these, like, aspirational sales plans that appear to shareholders and investors. So this is another thing I've talked about in the history of fast fashion episodes. But as a buyer, you get a budget. It's called you're open to buy. If you really want to get granular on the retail math here. And that budget for what you can buy is connected to the sales plan that was dictated by executives. And they're often going to be pitching a sales plan that is growth over last year, and that last year's growth was growth over the year before that. And next year should be bigger than this year, and the year after that will be bigger than that year. And so it's always growth forever, which is not really possible. But these sales plans get put in place. They're great for shareholders, they're great for investors. They look really good. They get executive bonuses, all that stuff. So you get this budget to hit this sales number that may not even be possible. But in order to hit that sales number, you have to have the right amount of inventory to hit it. So you're going to buy to that budget, even if it feels wrong. And then when you don't hit that sales number because it was too aspirational, that's being diplomatic there. Then you're going to be left with all this product that you bought that no one is interested in buying. And this is also going to get destroyed or sold off to jobbers or be flooded. Flooding thrift stores around the country. If you've ever wondered why you go into a Salvation army and they're just like aisles and aisles of Zara, or you go into a Goodwill and there's tons and tons of Target with the tag still on, this is what is happening. Too much inventory, not enough sales. The product has to go somewhere. So that's another cause of overproduction. And I also touched on one there, which was like, the more you buy, the lower the price. You can hit that margin and profitability target. So even though you know you can only sell 2,000, realistically, if the price break is at 5,000, you're just going to buy 5,000. Also, once again, that stuff is going to end up in thrift stores, in landfills, et cetera. So, yeah, all this extra stuff being made every year, and it's complicated, this overproduction, right? Part of it is like making the wrong decisions. Part of it is not having enough time. Part of it is these sales plans and cost savings and all this math, right? All this stuff that never gets bought. Once again, about 30% of the clothes that are made every year, these clothes end up in landfills, incinerators at the industrial shredders. Like I said, some retailers offload this inventory to thrift stores. What sucks about that is it crowds out better, more desirable secondhand product. I mean, like I said, go into a Salvation army and there's like three aisles of Zara. And you know, that means they're sending a bunch of other stuff off to the shredder because they can't fit it there. Same thing. Going to the. Going to Goodwill and seeing all that Target, you're like, okay, but like, what cool vintage stuff did you not put out to make room for Target, right? All that stuff flooding the thrift stores means that all the maybe cooler, better secondhand clothing actually just gets exported to the global south, where its disposal has already as we've talked about here, created an ecological disaster. So, yeah, this overproduction is a really big deal. We're talking about wasted resources, wasted time, and ultimately a waste crisis. So here we are. We were talking about the problems that the fashion industry faces right now. So where are we so far? We've talked about carbon emissions, we've talked about overproduction. Well, let's talk about returns, because returns are not technically overproduction, but they do join that waste stream with the rest of the overproduced clothes. And in the European Union, 1 in 5 garments, that's 20% are returned to the retailer. In the US that rate is more like 30%. So 3 out of every 10 items bought are returned. And we've talked about this here in the past, but for some retailers, the number is even higher, as high as 50 to 60%. The thing about that is, on one hand, returning stuff feels good, right? Because you're not going to wear it. Why would you hold onto it? Fine. It should be that simple. Unfortunately, this is the other hand. This is the dark side of returns. These returned garments are often not sold to other customers. I was a serial returner for a long time, and I believed that when I bought something and sent it back the next day, it got bought by someone else who had a great, happy life with it and it was a happy ending. But the reality is that retailers don't want to spend the money to process returns, and it is easier and cheaper for them to just toss it out, meaning it might go right off to the landfill, to the incinerator, or, you know, join all the other stuff that these brands are dumping in thrift stores. These returns are often caused by issues with fit and quality. And when you know that, you can see how that connects back to the issue of speed, of time, of the teams who design and produce these items not having enough time to get the fit and quality right. And now it's being returned. So all of these issues are connected, right? It's a huge broken system. And when we break down the major issues of fashion right now, I would say they are the speed overproduction as we reviewed over consumption by customers, right? We buy way too many clothes. And to be fair, we're buying way too many clothes because they suck. And we're always trying to find clothes that we like, and it's really, really hard, right? But we also know that we've bought into micro trends and a new outfit for every occasion and not wanting to be seen in the same outfit twice in a and on and on and on. So yes, there are systemic issues here, but there are also personal and social issues here. And of course we haven't even touched on this yet. We've touched on the carbon emissions, we've touched on the waste, but we didn't talk about the expansive human rights issues created by the fashion industry, meaning exploitation of workers, meaning things like forced labor, poverty wages, horrible working conditions and the impact of living near a factory who might not be disposing of its water or other chemicals properly. The impact of living on a warming planet and the weather and other like climate issues that come with that. There are major human rights issues attached to clothing. And and I gotta tell you, when I was working still within the fashion industry as a buyer, I kind of had an inkling of that, but not to the level of the reality of it all. And so basically what I'm saying, the fashion industry has a lot of problems and they're all really big things. And yeah, they overlap in spots, but they're also somewhat independent of one another. So it's hard to imagine a single cure for it all. Changing all of this is going to require personal change, social change and systemic change. We have our work cut out for us. If you're here listening to me talk right now, it's because you love fashion or you love style, or you love the creative expression of clothing. We know that this is worth fixing.
- [27:57]
Dustin
Let's take a moment to thank some of the incredible small businesses who keep Clotheshorse going via their generous Patreon support. Selena Sanders, a social impact brand that specializes in upcycle clothing using only reclaimed, vintage or thrifted materials from tea towels, linens, blankets and quilts. Sustainably crafted in Los Angeles, each piece is designed to last in one's closet for generations to come. Maximum style, minimal carbon footprint. Shift clothing out of beautiful Astoria, Oregon with a focus on natural fibers, simple hard working designs and putting fat people first. Discover more@shiftwheeler.com late to the Party Creating one of a kind statement clothing from vintage, salvaged and thrifted textiles. They hope to tap into the dreamy memories we all hold. Floral curtains, a childhood dress, the wallpaper in your best friend's rec room. All while creating modern sustainable garments that you'll love wearing and have for years to come. Late to the Party is passionate about celebrating and preserving textiles, the memories they hold and the stories they have yet to tell. Check them out on Instagram. Latetothepartypeople Vino Vintage based just outside of la. We love the hunt of shopping secondhand because you never know what you might find. Catch us at flea markets around Southern Californ by following us on Instagram Vino Vintage so you don't miss our next event. Dylan Paige is an online clothing and lifestyle brand based out of St. Louis, Missouri. Our products are chosen with intention for the conscious community. Everything we carry is animal friendly, ethically made, sustainably sourced and cruelty free. Dylan Paige is for those who never stop questioning where something comes from. We know that personal experience dictates what's sustainable for you and we are here to help guide and support you to make choices that fit your needs. Check us out@dylanpage.com and find us on Instagram ylanpage life and style Salt Hats Purveyors of truly sustainable hats, hand blocked, sewn and embellished in Detroit, Michigan. Find us on Instagram at Salt Hats Gentle Vibes Vintage we are purveyors of polyester and psychedelic relics. We encourage experimentation and play not only in your wardrobe but in your home too.
- [30:25]
Amanda
We have thousands of killer vintage pieces.
- [30:28]
Dustin
Ready for their next adventure. See them all on Instagram. Entlevibes Vintage Thumbprint is Detroit's only fair trade marketplace. Located in the historic Eastern Market. Our small business specializes in products handmade by empowered women in South Africa making a living wage creating things they love like hand painted candles and ceramics. We also carry a curated assortment of sustainable and natural locally made goods. Thumbprint is a great gift destination for both the special people in your life and for yourself. Browse our online store@thumbprintdetroit.com and find us on Instagram thumbprintdetroit Sagavon Vintage DTLV is a vintage clothing, accessories and decor reselling business based in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Not only do we sell in Las Vegas, but we're also located throughout resale markets in San Francisco as well as at a curated boutique called Lux and Ivy located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Jessica, the founder and owner of Vagabond Vintage DTLV recently opened the first IRL location located in the Arts District of downtown Las Vegas on August 5th. The shop has a strong emphasis on 60s and 70s garments, single stitch tees and dreamy loungewear. Follow them on Instagram vagabondvintagedtlv and keep an eye out for their website coming fall of 2022.
- [32:01]
Amanda
The Internet for the past year, maybe two years has been flooded with stories extolling AI, artificial intelligence as the answer to fashion's issues of sustainability and impact. Headlines range from referring to AI as a tech infused revolution to a game changer for Sustainable fashion. So much use of the words revolution and unlocking a better future. When you see enough of these, it's easy to believe that perhaps AI is the solution to these problems. After all, they're writing about it everywhere, right? They wouldn't be writing things that aren't real. And it does offer hope that changing fashion will not require very much change at all from the industry, just a few additional budget line items for this new software that will fix everything. Here's the thing we know. I just spent all this time unpacking how complicated it is, how big these problems are, and how while there is overlap, they're also kind of different from one another, right? All the problems, it's hard to imagine that just installing some software could fix it. This is not unlike greenwashing campaigns and why they work, right? Because greenwashing is successful as a marketing tool, because it offers customers the possibility that clothing can be made without impact, that there are fabrics that cancel out the repercussions of over consumption, that we can carry on without changing our own relationship to clothing shopping and stuff. And what AI is being pitched as right now is a solution that won't involve any changes from anyone who is a part of this fashion system, whether you are a brand or you are a factory or you are a customer. And when I know something is as complicated as the problems that the fashion industry faces, when I know how big they are, right? And I hear that we could just install this software and fix it immediately, I am extremely skeptical. It is the same as, like, when H and M shows up and is like, oh, this is made of recycled fabric. And you're like, and. And, you know, like, how does that fix anything? Right? This is just like that. That said, AI could be part of the solution, but a better future for fashion will and must require a lot of systemic change, too. The things I was talking about just a few moments ago, we're talking about personal change, social change, and systemic change. Maybe an app could be a part of that, but it's not going to be all of that. It is very important that we recognize that there is no quick fix for fashion's environmental issues. There is definitely not a quick fix for fashion's ethical issues, right? The human rights issues. When we acknowledge that, we can begin to see that at least part of these conversations about AI well, it's hype, right? And we recognize that it's easier for us to maybe see where the opportunities are rather than just saying, okay, you said AI is going to fix it, so I'm Going to sit back and just let you do that while I carry on with what I normally do? Nope. Knowing how complicated this all is actually helps us see a path forward, even if it can feel overwhelming at times. Okay, so knowing that AI is not the solution on its own, is it at least an important part of the solution? Well, that's a little bit more complicated. So let's take a look at the problems I listed earlier and explore how.
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Dustin
AI could help with some of these problems.
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Amanda
Of course, with some of these other problems, AI can't help at all. Let's walk through them and see where technology could be one of the tools we pull out of our sort of fixing the world toolbox. It's a huge toolbox. It's massive. It has to ride on a huge truck, the kind that carries the space shuttle. Okay, we already said speed is one of the biggest issues. Let's slow down the production process. Let's take more time to fine tune fit and details. This could mitigate return rates, making that problem less of an issue. And it could create products that customers would want to wear longer, which might curb customer over consumption of clothing. Great. The industry could also shift from air freight to ocean if it had more time. It's estimated that the carbon footprint of a garment shipped via airplane is 14 times higher than a garment that is shipped via ocean. And as we've talked about here in the past, most of the clothes we buy in 2024 have been on at least one airplane ride, if not two or three, especially if you bought it from Zara. But even if you ran over to Target right now to buy a T shirt, most likely that shirt got into the US via airplane. Because when clothes are shipped via boat, it takes about six to eight months. Just the shipping time. Right. Like coming across the ocean, going through customs, getting loaded off the boat and going on the truck and then going to the warehouse, all that stuff. Two months in the fast fashion era is too much time. When you only have one to three months to get a product from design to in customer seance, you're skipping the boat. Instead you're shipping it via airplane, which only takes a few days. And that's why most clothes are shipped via air. Right now. If the industry could slow itself down, get rid of this one to three month time period and go back to three to six to eight months, everything could ship via boat again and we would see immediately a reduction in carbon footprint. So the speed could be good for the environment and it could also result in better product, which would hopefully Curb over consumption and have a lot less stuff end up in the landfill as fast as it's been. This would be a big win, just slowing it down. It is difficult to see how technology, particularly AI, could make an impact in this area because this is really more an issue of change. Changing how the fashion industry currently works. Slowing down trend cycles, reducing style count, increasing headcount, and design and production, meaning hiring more designers and production people to get things right and giving these teams more time to execute product development to end up with something that customers will love. Hiring more people, slowing things down. There's not a technological solution there. It's just a cultural, systemic solution. Right. The thing is this I know can happen because this is what the industry was before the fast fashion era. It just means changing back to that. No app required. Okay. One of the other issues I talked about was overproduction. So let's talk about how we could stop overproduction. We could utilize technology to more accurately predict customer demand by size and style. Right now, buyers and planners only have, you know, relatively rudimentary tools at their disposal to predict sales by style and size. Spreadsheets and calculators, my two best friends, and they do a great job. But perhaps AI could be used to better predict consumer demand. I don't know. We'll talk about that a little bit more later and what companies are offering in terms of that right now. But my thought was here, okay. As a person who's worked in this industry and knows the tools that we have at our disposal and how much time it takes and how there could be, like computers could be smarter than us at finding the answer, and perhaps that could reduce over production. I don't know. Right. I do think a lot about Old Navy when I think about this problem. Last year, Old Navy invested heavily into a plus size expansion in all of its stores. And it was really exciting. Like, rather than having a plus size section in the store, they knocked down those walls and just all the sizes would be housed together and the majority of styles would be available in all sizes. And you could go into the store and try them on. This is a major. And by all accounts, the product fit well. Customers liked it. But the units made by size were wrong, Meaning they didn't order the right quantities of each size. They ordered too many of the smallest and largest sizes and too little of the sizes in the middle that customers wanted. And this resulted in what we in the industry call high inventory liability, meaning a lot of stuff that didn't sell and needed to go on sale. And A lot of unhappy customers who were like, yes, I have been looking for clothes in my size. I'm going to go to the store now and buy them after I try them on, which I never get to do. Irl, oh wait, they don't have it for me. So Old Navy ends up saying, you know what, we're going to abandon this initiative because it didn't go well. Even though all they really would have needed to do is carry on but fine tune the sizes like what they bought by size. So there was the right amount of inventory and the sizes people wanted to buy. Is this something that an AI tool could have predicted in advance? Maybe I'm just trying to give AI the benefit of the doubt here. I do wonder though, like AI supposedly can take things like customer data and size data and sales history history, and it can predict the inventory needs by style. Supposedly this is a potential use. This would have been a great time for that. Put a pin in that idea of AI helping make these kinds of decisions because we're going to come back to it. So that's one source of overproduction, right? Maybe buying the wrong things in the wrong sizes. Well, we said already that another source of this overproduction is pricing and margin targets and sales plans. Even with better tools for predicting customer demand like I just talked about, the reality is that overproduction is also the result of the pressure to increase profit margins and reduce product costs. Like I said earlier, the larger the buy, the lower the cost. So buyers are often ordering far more than they can sell in order to meet these aggressive targets. Or they're buying far more than they should to meet a sales plan that came from an executive team. Once again, these are issues that cannot be solved via technology. This is another issue of large scale industrial change. Changing how the industry works. Rather than expecting growth year over year over year, pulling that back, right? So that maybe people aren't over buying inventory that can't be sold and being more realistic about margin targets. Just how sales are planned to be higher each year than the previous year for like the rest of time, the profitability of product is planned the same way. So let's say you are a buyer and this year you had a best selling sweater and you decide, I'm going to bring that sweater back again next year. Well, guess what? Next year that very same sweater has to be more profitable than it was this year, which means you have to get a lower cost than you did this year. And if that sweater continues to perform, then the year after that when you try to bring it back again, it needs to be even more profitable, meaning even cheaper than the previous year. And this, as we talked about back in the series about why new clothes are kind of garbage right now, this is why, okay? Because things have to be cheaper and more profitable year after year after year. This issue of turns into an issue of product quality, right? Which then drives more returns because stuff isn't as good as it used to be. That's another element of this overproduction. All these clothes that no one wants, and AI is not going to fix those problems. What is going to fix those problems is executives changing the way they look at growth in sales and profitability. Okay, we touched on this. Reducing return rates. This is another thing the industry has to fix. This keeps items out of the landfill, and it encourages customers to wear garments longer. It, in theory, stems over consumption because people buy things that they like and they don't need to buy something new right away to replace it. Reducing return rates would be a really big deal. Size and fit seem to be the biggest challenges fashion faces from a product development perspective. No one is doing a great job of this because size and fit have always been issues for mass production, right? Like, it's just never been worked out. And this is one of those situations where I'm like, okay, maybe the solution here involves a bigger brain, right? Who can take all this data and make sense of it in a way that a human can't. And that's why I wonder, could AI take data sets of body measurements and proportions and create better grading patterns and fit? Could AI help create better size charts? Right. Gosh, size charts are so bad out there. Don't get me started. Maybe AI could help with that, right? Okay, we're going to talk about this more in a few moments, but I will tell you that despite combing through one article after another extolling the virtues of various AI design tools, I did not find any that address these issues of fit grading and size charts. I did see some options for making better size recommendations to customers based on previous purchases and returns. And while that feels useful to me, it seems, I don't know, that its effectiveness would be limited by the consistency of a brand's grading and fit. And the reality is, as you know, right now, most brands do not have consistent grading and fit. So what's the point of these AI recommendations? Another way that the industry could reduce these returns and also, you know, reduce customer over consumption. Consumption is improving product quality so that customers wear clothes for longer periods of time. This could slow down the Constant flow from retailer to customer to landfill or donation bin. However, product quality is not something that can be solved by technology. Instead, it requires a major shift in the status quo of profitability expectations, which I just talked about. Product lead time, meaning giving these teams more time by slowing down the process so that they can get things right and hiring more people for design and production teams so people have time to do this right. We have more people working on it. We're going to get things right. And one thing I'll tell you about this whole, like, headcount idea of like hiring more people is that in the span of my career, you know, to make the math, math in fast fashion, one way companies cut their expenses is cut their staff expenses. So maybe, I mean, I can say this from my own experience. In the beginning of my career, I maybe managed three categories and soon it was five, and then it was eight, and then it was everything. And that is because when people would leave a job or get promoted, they wouldn't replace them. They would redistribute all of their workload to other people on the team. Team without a raise, of course. It's an opportunity is what they would say. But the same thing was happening and is happening in design and production. Because while I would say most of these retailers have reached the bottom in terms of costing, especially now with all these horrible fabrics and just the way they squeeze factories while the clothes could not get cheaper than they are, I hope, but they still have to deliver more profit year over year over year because that's the model, right? How they do that is by cutting other expenses. And that means buyers, designers, planners, production people, right? They don't want to spend money on that. And I want you to put a pin in that idea because we're going to come back to it.
- [50:20]
Dustin
If you're enjoying this episode, then this is a great time to remind you that my work here at Clothes Horse is made possible by the support of listeners like you, just like NPR and these great small businesses. Please go give them your support. Blank cas, or Blanket Coats by cas, is focused on restoring, renewing and reviving the history held within vintage and heirloom textiles by embodying the love, craft and energy that is original to each vintage textile. As I transfer it into a new garment, I hope we can reteach ourselves to care for and mend what we have and make it last. Blank CAS lives on Instagram at Blankcas and a website will be launched soon@blankcasts.com located in Whistler, Canada. Velvet Underground is a Velvet Jungle full of vintage and secondhand clothing plants, a.
- [51:20]
Amanda
Vegan cafe and lots of rad products.
- [51:23]
Dustin
From other small sustainable businesses.
- [51:26]
Amanda
Our mission is to create a brand.
- [51:27]
Dustin
And community dedicated to promoting self expression as well as educating and inspiring a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle both for the people and the planet. Find us on Instagram opvelvetunderground or online at www.shshop velvetunderground.com Saint Evens is a New York City based vintage shop that is dedicated to bringing you those special pieces you'll reach for again and again. More than just a store, St. Evens is dedicated to sharing the stories and history behind the garments. 10% of all sales are donated to a different charitable organization each month. New Vintage is released every Thursday@wearsaintevens.com with previews of new pieces and more brought to you on Instagram.
- [52:19]
Amanda
That's ware.
- [52:20]
Dustin
St. Evens Country Feedback is a mom and pop record shop in Tarboro, North Carolina. They specialize in used rock, country and soul and offer affordable vintage clothing and housewares. Do you have used records you want to sell? Country Feedback wants to buy them? Find us on Instagram Country Feedback Vintage and vinyl or head down east and visit our brick and mortar. All are welcome at this inclusive and family friendly record shop in the country. Republica Unicornia Yarns Handmade yarn and notions for the color obsessed. Made with love and some swearing in fabulous Atlanta, Georgia by head yarn wench Kathleen. Get ready for rainbows with a side of giving a damn. Republica Unicornia is all about making your own magic using small batch, responsibly sourced hand dyed yarns and thoughtfully made notions. Slow fashion all the way down and discover the joy of creating your very own beautiful hand knit, crocheted or woven pieces. Find us on Instagram @republicaunicorniarns and at www.republicaunicornia.com. picnic Wear a slow fashion brand ethically made by hand from vintage and dead stock materials, most notably vintage towels. Founder Dani has worked in the industry as a fashion Designer for over 10 years, but started Picnic Wear in response to her dissatisfaction with the industry's shortcomings. Picnicwear recently moved to rural North Carolina where all their sewing and accessories are now designed and cut, but the majority of their sewing is done by skilled garment workers in New York York City. Their customers take comfort in knowing that all their sewists are paid well above New York City minimum wage. Picnic Wear offers minimal waste and maximum authenticity future vintage over future garbage. Cute Little Ruin is an online shop dedicated to providing quality vintage and secondhand clothing, vinyl and home items in a wide range of styles and price points.
- [54:28]
Amanda
If it's ethical and legal, we try.
- [54:30]
Dustin
To find a home for it. Vintage style with progressive values. Find us on Instagram utelittleruin Is there a little bit of Italy in your soul? Are you an enthusiast of pre loved decor and accessories? Bring vintage Italian style and history into your space. With the pewter thimble we source useful and beautiful things and mend them where needed. We also find gorgeous illustrations and make.
- [54:58]
Amanda
Them print worthy tarot cards, tea towels.
- [55:01]
Dustin
And hand picked treasures available to you from the comfort of your own home, responsibly sourced from across Rome, lovingly renewed by fairly paid artists and artisans with something for every budget. Discover more at theputerthimble.com Deco Denim is a startup based out of San Francisco and it sells clothing and accessories that are sustainable, gender fluid, size inclusive and high quality. Made to last for years to come. Deco Denim is trying to change the way you think about buying clothes. Founder Sarah Mattis wants to empower people to ask important questions like where was this made? Was this garment made ethically? Is this fabric made of plastic? Can this garment be upcycled and if not, can it be recycled? Sign up@decodenim.com to receive $20 off your first purchase. They promise not to spam you and send out no more than three emails a month, with two of them surrounding education or a personal note from the founder. Again, that's decodenim.com.
- [56:12]
Amanda
Before we go into the potential uses of AI, we have to talk about the environmental impact. This was really alarming to me because I'm going to tell you, I know that people are using ChatGPT to do their homework or to write emails or to get answers for clients or create Instagram captions. I mean, even Google is throwing AI my way everywhere I go on the Internet. I'm sure you've seen it in your search results, like as an option at the top of your search results. Spoiler alert. Many times the AI information is incorrect. And by the way, if you want to see search results that don't include this this AI nonsense at the top, you can just type in your search and then minus like the minus sign AI and you won't see it anymore. And you don't need to see it anymore because it's not very helpful. But also I see in my Gmail, which I use all day, every day, Google is like, hey, do you want us to just use AI to write your email? No, I'm good. Do you want us to, in this Google sheet, just use AI to create a spreadsheet for you? No, seriously, it's fine bro. Thanks though. One time, way before I knew the environmental implications of AI, I was just messing around and I asked it to write an introduction to Clotheshorse. It was so terrible. Such. It was so shitty, to be honest, and embarrassing. And I was like, wow, wait, are we really worried that AI is going to take over the world when it can't even write a. Like an interesting description of a podcast? Well, this AI stuff is really bad. Why are people hyping it so much? But it's everywhere, right? And we see people making art from it, making memes from it, et cetera, et cetera. It's a big deal. I gotta tell you, I have had a few sleepless nights where I've laid in bed at night just like spiraling. Now that I know the environmental impact of all of this AI and just wondering, spoiler if it's worth it. So the training process for a single AI model can consume thousands of megawatt hours of electricity, releasing hundreds of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. As I mentioned when I started talking about this AI, it's being used for so many things right now that I just, I don't think we need. Right, we don't need it. And studies have indicated that using AI for a task consumes 30 to 40 times the amount of energy of a person using a so called less intelligent form of technology to do the same thing. And by the way, in this case, less intelligent doesn't mean pulling out an abacus or doing long division by hand. It means using a calculator, using spreadsheets, creating art in Photoshop, or Illustrator. These amazing tools are less intelligent than just typing in a prompt and getting results. But we know that they're actually, actually fairly sophisticated. We're going to talk about this more later. But if you want to take the human brain out of the equation, you need a lot of electricity. And the demand for increasing electricity to power AI is expected to exceed the total electricity use of Belgium by 2026. Generating this power, for the most part, relies on heavy fossil fuel use. Now, interestingly enough, here where I live in Pennsylvania, there is a nuclear power plant called Three Mile Island. And that name might, might remind. Sound familiar to you? Because it was the site of the biggest nuclear accident here in the United States. I want to say it was back in the late 70s or early 80s and I grew up near Three Mile Island. It was a constant source of nightmares for me. Honestly, I had a friend who literally like Three Mile island is an island in the river and it's not a very wide river. And my friend I grew up with in elementary school, her name was Heather, she lived on the river across from Three Mile Island. Like you couldn't get close to it, obviously. There were like safety perimeter around it. But she could have just gotten in a little rowboat and like rowed over to it, it was so close. And sometimes I couldn't sleep when I would stay over at her house because I was like, this is too scary and close. Anyway, Three Mile island has been closed for quite some time now because it was just too expensive. Apparently, like it wasn't profitable to make electricity using the power plant, or at least to the level that its owner wanted. And so it's been decommissioned for quite some time, but actually it is going to be reopened, put back into operation very soon. And it only has one customer for its electricity. That customer is Microsoft. And they are going to be using that to power a lot of its AI. But beyond the electricity, there's even more that I learned as I was working on this. And one thing is that these data centers, which is where the AI lives, right? It's just all of these computers within one building. These data centers get very, very hot. If they get too hot, then the machines break and then there's no AI, no Internet, nothing. Cooling them is a major challenge. Water. Fresh water is used to cool data centers by filling pipes surrounding the building with cool fresh water. This fresh water evaporates and this takes water from people that should be used for drinking water, agriculture, et cetera. Nope, it's just cool. And some computers. This water use is no, no joke. Research has indicated that 500 ML of water, which if you're not on the.
- [62:13]
Dustin
Metric system, probably means nothing to you.
- [62:16]
Amanda
So let me rephrase it that way. About the amount of water in your standard 16 ounce plastic bottle of water. You know this one so well. Well, that much water is used every.
- [62:29]
Dustin
Time you ask ChatGPT a series of.
- [62:32]
Amanda
Between 5 to to 50 prompts or questions. The same goes for asking ChatGPT to write a 100 word email. The proof of this water consumption is very obvious on a large scale. Remember how I talked about Microsoft needing more electricity to power all of its AI tools? Well, it's also using a lot of water. In its 2022 Environmental Impact Report, which was released in 2023, Microsoft revealed that its global water consumption grew 34% from 2021 to 2022, that's nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic sized swimming pools. And this was a major increase compared to previous years. Once again, 34%. Experts say that this increase in water consumption was driven by Microsoft's heavy investment AI and its partnership with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Microsoft has a lot of initiatives in place in an attempt to reduce their water use and we'll see what happens. But I'm skeptical. And by the way, it's not just Microsoft, because even Google, who, like I said, has been putting generative AI into everything around us right now and we don't really need it. Google reported a 20% increase in its water use for the same time period. So earlier this week, that organization, that Instagram account Commons Earth posted about generative AI and its use of water. And it's just a total environmental impact on Instagram. And the comments were just full of so much like whataboutism, which I just, it's nails on a chalkboard to me. People were like, well, what about Instagram or email? Those use water too. And you're not talking about that. It's the, like, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, so we should all just give up. Or oh, you're talking about fast fashion on your iPhone. I guess you're a hypocrite. It's that kind of stuff, which is intended to be a gotcha moment and shut people down, but to me really can be, if you have the patience and time for it, a way to get the conversation going, actually. So I will tell you that no doubt much of the tech infrastructure that powers our lives in 2024 involves water consumption and it involves a lot of electricity and all these other things. Right? But that doesn't mean that we need to turn off the Internet for good and just walk away from it. It means that we have to pressure these companies to find a better solution. And it also means that maybe, just maybe, we reevaluate the necessity of some of these tools and how we're using them. Beyond that, most importantly, we use this information to recognize that AI isn't some miraculous planet saver. Everything has nuance, including how AI fits into our lives and when it makes sense. So now that you know that AI uses so much energy and water, we probably. No, not probably. We should prioritize using it for tasks that could be an environmental win. Right? That we're pretty sure are an environmental win. So maybe we don't ask ChatGPT to help us come up with a Funny joke, right? That might not be the best use of it when it comes to fashion. If we're using AI for things that don't actually have an environmental win, what we're really doing is exacerbating the environmental impact of fashion, meaning we're making it worse. I do think there could be good uses of AI that could mitigate the impact of the current fast fashion industry. Right. Like I talked about this a little bit before, I'm going to talk about it a little bit again. One is forecasting demand and stemming over production as it exists right now. AI pulls a variety of data to forecast consumer demand by product, color and size, or at least it can. Right. So it pulls historical sales data, meaning like what's sold in the past, market trends data, meaning like, what are people buying right now? How much are they willing to pay for it? What are they into? Consumer behavior data, like, you know, where are customers spending their money right now? What prices do they like? What prices don't they like? You know, what is their. Their financial situation, Economic indicators, Is the economy good or bad? Right. Competitor activity, like, what are other brands doing? How do we come out ahead? So AI supposedly can take all this information to identify top sellers, meaning like potential reorders. Maybe expanding a collection like this is something that's doing really well. Maybe do it in different colors, maybe different lengths, that kind of thing. And it can also identify bottom sellers, meaning like, these are things that are not good. You should mark them down, you should not order them again in the future. Great. This all sounds really helpful. Recently, AI specialists Paretos partnered with Get Ready. I might be mispronouncing this. It's a European brand called Armed Angels, and I'm just going to tell you that something now. So I have a lot of speech issues that were not addressed when I was a kid. It's just kind of like my brain doesn't always connect with my mouth very well. And anytime I encounter a word that I'm a little nervous about pronouncing here on the podcast, I actually will watch a lot of videos of people saying it and I will practice it over and over again. And sometimes I'll just say it 10 times to get it right in the episode. And of course, sometimes, sometimes I still do mispronounce a word on an episode. And I will tell you, when someone sends me an email that I've mispronounced something, it makes me want to die because I worked so hard to not pronounce it incorrectly. So with Armed Angels, or it could be Armed Angels or Armid Angles. I have no idea. I could literally not find one person on the Internet saying this word no matter how many times I Googled. So if I'm mispronouncing it, just be nice. So this is a European brand, and they worked with this AI specialist, Paretos, that's the name of the company, to address that brand's issues of overproduction. I'm going to tell you, you're probably like, I've never heard of this brand. Like, whatever, how big could their overproduction be? And I will just tell you, I've worked for so many companies over the years, and almost always, regardless of size of that company, there are issues of wasted products. Right. For all the reasons I talked about earlier. So Armed Angels hired Paretos to help them. Through Paretos order recommendations, we have the potential to reduce overproduction at Armed Angels by more than 40,000 pieces annually. A direct contribution to our sustainability strategy. That quote comes from Martin Hoefler, who is the CEO of Armed Angels. And I was like, okay, well, 40,000 pieces, you know, know it's dropping the bucket when we talk about billions. But if everybody was using this technology, this could be pretty cool, right? So I was like, okay, I'm going to learn more about Paretos. Is this a real benefit or is this hype? So, Paretos works with a variety of clients across many industries, but Armed Angels seems to be its first fashion client. And on its own website, Paretos does promise 40% higher accuracy in demand forecasting. What that 40% means is pretty vague. Like, is it a 40% reduction in overbought inventory? Because that'd be pretty good. Is it a 40% decrease in individual planning and buying mistakes? I mean, that could be good, too, but this 40% higher accuracy doesn't mean much to me. So Armed Angels used this technology for the first time to plan its spring 2024 collection. And despite it now being fall winter 2024, I have not found any updated information on its progress, which is concerning. I will tell you that while digging into the claims Paretos makes on its website regarding the usefulness of its software, I saw two recurring themes. And here's where we're going to get to what's at the core of how AI is currently being used by the fashion industry. Okay. One of the themes was that it was greater efficiency than humans using Excel. And note that I said efficiency. I didn't say accuracy. I said efficiency, which translates as time. And the other thing that they're claiming over and over again on their site is that it would cut the time to plan inventory and product commitments down to just, just one hour per week. And when I see those claims, as someone who's worked within the industry for a long time, I know what the real underlying promise is. The real net gain here for these companies is to cut costs by reducing team size. Because all those things I talked about right now, looking at historical sales data and market trends and economic indicators and all that stuff, there are already teams of people who do that. Planners, analysts and buyers. They take all of those data points and they use it to make decisions. As a buyer, I was the tool that determined best sellers and worst sellers. I planned orders and SKU expansion and markdowns. And I did that in partnership with my planner. And over the last decade of my career, I saw headcount in planning and buying cut as retailers tried to balance lower prices and higher margin targets. Meaning they were like, as I mentioned earlier, cutting staff to keep prices low and profitable. Ultimately, if you read between the lines here, Paretos is not promising a more sustainable fashion industry. They are promising a more precise, profitable business with less salaries to pay. It's really difficult for me to see this kind of tool as more effective than merely having enough humans working on the team to make these decisions. Okay. Another potentially good use of AI to possibly solve some of fashion's problems is fine tuning, fit and grading. I touched on this earlier and if they could get fit right, this would reduce return rates, it would slow the rate of over consumption by customers. It's all a big win. And as I mentioned earlier, despite digging through article after article about AI tools that could be used for fashion design, I found zero that focused on fit and technical design. In fact, there are numerous tools that will literally create, and I'm putting that in quote, quotes, create designs from rough sketches or even just words. Mid Journey is the best known here. But there are other tools like Boudicca and the New Black. And all of these tools promise you that anyone can start their own fashion line. They don't have to be a designer. They don't have to have a team of designers. They just have to have an idea. Great. That's what we need is even more close. Right? Many of the AI applications that I saw, which, I mean I looked at easily 100, this field is already so overcrowded with people selling the same product. All of them promised to make the creative side of design more efficient. And they did that by promising savings in time and design. Cost costs, the translation there, savings on salaries and staff. You don't need a designer when you have AI is the promise, right? I also encountered numerous applications for designing T shirts, predicting style trends and building color stories. Once again, all jobs creative roles currently completed by humans. There is one app or type of AI tool I would say that has been used to address fit and size that I think could be helpful. There are e commerce plugins like Wear that's W A I R that help customers find their sizes using browsing, purchasing and returns history for that specific customer. And ware promises a 19% reduction in return rate. That's not huge when you do the math. If one in five garments are currently returned in the EU, that's 20 out of every 100. With a tool like Wear that would reduce it to 16. That's an improvement. But more significant improvement could be made by fine tuning, grading and improving product quality. Right? Once again we're like, oh, here we are. No app is going to fix everything. We also need to do these other things. Still, still, I do believe that systemic changes in tandem with technology like wear could have major impact in reducing returns. So there's one way where I'm like, yeah, this is a thing. Okay, tell me more. When I think about AI and slow fashion and overproduction and all of these things, I always come back to like, what if we just created bespoke garments, meaning custom fit for every customer? Imagine if every garment was made specifically for that specific person. It could reduce return rates, it could reduce overproduction, and it could slow customer over consumption because people would have something that they love, right, that fits them, that they feel great in. Isn't that all we really want? There is a company called Theodore. It's based in Sydney, Australia and they make suits for men. It uses AI and its own Pocket tailor app to create bespoke suits for customers. In addition to using each customer's measurements to get the perfect size, it also makes recommendations on silhouettes and other details based on the customer's measurements. And the goal there is to get customers a suit that they love and will wear for life. Currently, these suits are produced in a factory in China, so customers must wait several weeks, usually about two, to receive their suit. To me, two weeks for a bespoke suit? Like, come on, bring it on. But fortunately, we live in the fast fashion era. We live in the order something on Amazon this morning and get it by the afternoon era. And people are impatient. We are used to instant gratification. So I think in a situation like what Theodora is doing. Let's say we rolled this out for other categories of products, other customers. I think the solution to making it faster, but not necessarily fast fashion and customers being less nervous about trying it is if companies who make this kind of stuff were able to create smaller manufacturing hubs around the world where products could be made more locally. And that would save time, that would save carbon emissions. Everyone would get their stuff faster. They could go in and pick it up. I mean, this is an amazing idea. Now, I don't know how many of you listened to the episode of Clotheshorse featuring Angela of Fabric. It was a few months ago. Fabric is an incubator, an organization. They do so much stuff in Tempe, Arizona. And one thing that fabric has that makes them super unique is a massive piece of technology. It's called the Cornet Presto direct to fabric printer. It allows designers to print full color prints or solid color on the individual pattern pieces and on the final fabric for the garment. The whole thing just prints out. You cut it out, it gets sewn together and it's done. It's like a professionally made, high quality garment. I think pairing AI bespoke technology, like what Theodore is doing with a machine like this, could make bespoke garment production fast and local. Have a lot of wins in so many different ways. Imagine if there was just like a hug hub, much like there are Amazon hubs where you could go pick up your especially made for you to your measurements and preferences Clothing. How amazing is that? That's no overproduction then. So yeah, so this could be a good thing, right? The thing is, even with the few things here where I was like, these are winds that exist right now and could be rolled out in an even better way. We don't know for certain that these actually, these winds actually counterbalance the climate impact impact of AI. And so much more research is needed. What we do know is that none of these AI tools fix the sustainability problems of fashion on their own large scale. Systemic changes are also required. Right? As always, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. And that's the case with AI. The thing is, AI is in use in the fashion industry right now, but not for applications related to sustainability. Unfortunately, the fashion industry is currently using AI to replace the human element of fashion. For example, replacing designers with AI to create designs and prints. In the past year, there have been two big stories of American brands being under fire for using AI developed prints. Selkie and Bagu. And while both brands claimed that the prints created Using Midjourney were then fine tuned and finished by humans. It raises the question, why couldn't they have been designed from beginning to end by a human? In the case of Selkie, the designer and founder of the brand said that she was unable to design the constant flow of new designs completely on her own. In the case of Bagu, supposedly just Midjourney was just one of the tools the designer liked to use. When I think about using AI to design prints, I have a lot of thoughts. It's really concerning when we consider two things that we know about AI. One is that generative AI is trained by the work of other artists and designers. This raises the ethical issues of pulling from artists who have not opted into training generative AI. So we got an ethical issue right out of the gate. The other issue is the environmental side of it. The energy use of AI is 30 to 40 times that of a human doing the same work. Is this a good use of fossil fuels? Right. All that electricity, all the water to cool the data center you want. When I going back to Sulky and the founder, Kimberly Gordon, saying, I just don't have the bandwidth to do all the designing, well, then you need to hire someone, right? With the person who designed the stuff for Bagu using Midjourney, I would just say find a different tool. It's not worth it. From an environmental perspective. What did you do before mid journey to design prints? Perhaps go back to that. The thing is, on paper, using AI to design prints and products is a win for profitability. Even going back to Selkie, she used Midjourney to design these prints for this collection when she could have hired someone, paid someone to design those prints. But that's. That impacts profit, right? AI allows brands to increase style count and guarantee constant newness. Without hiring more designers to do that work, they can make fast change faster and cheaper. Using AI could even result in cutting headcount, meaning letting go of designers on design teams. You know, and the idea of AI creating designs for products is nothing new per se, because we know, even though we don't know for certain how it works, that Shein has been using some sort of AI technology to scrape designs and art from the Internet and then copy the works of smaller brands and artists. So we know that AI already is at play in product creation. But what if I told you that brands in the US are also asking designers to only use midjourney to create designs? This adds a layer of plausible deniability in situations of accusations of copying and stealing designs. This completely changes what it means to be a designer. Now I'm going to share some information I learned from friends who are still working within the fashion industry. All of them wish to remain anonymous because they still work for a company using AI in place of traditional design, meaning like, you know, humans doing the designing. So I'm not going to name their employers either. And this is one of those things where you just have to like, either you trust what you hear from me or you don't. It's up to you. But I don't want to name these people. I will say this, they are people I trust. Their stories confirmed other stories from people working for other brands under the same corporate umbrella. So I know this is real. And this larger company where all these people work has several brands under its ownership that people often don't consider fast fashion because they have excellent branding and nice store merchandising, but they are in fact fast fashion. And another thing about the brands on this campus is that they are often accused of stealing designs from smaller brands and artists, like all the time, going back decades. So this part will not appear in the transcript either because I just don't want these people to anyone to figure out who told me this and people to lose their jobs or something. So basically, basically this company, the creative director for the larger corporation has now requires all designers for all the brands within this company to use midjourney for all design. Which means that they don't sit down and sketch anything at all. They type in prompts over and over again into midjourney until they get what buyers want to buy. And so part of the design process normally is sketch review where the designers show up with all these things they've sketched. They might have some fabric swatches, they hang them on the wall and you talk about what you'd like to develop into and then they go back and fully design them, make tech packs and they go into the sampling process. Well now, sketch review, there aren't sketches. There are printouts from midjourney of potential style. They hang them in the wall and then buyers choose from those. And the company has made this shift into fully like automated AI design because they want that plausible deniability of not stealing designs from other people. And I mean, I could go on about that for a while, but since we know AI pulls from stuff that already exists, kind of is already already, you know, stealing from other designers and artists. But they want to avoid any clear legal accusations, right? So in effect, the designers are no longer designers, they are mid journey technicians and they don't get to be creative in that way anymore, even though, like, that's literally what they went to school for. That's their passion. They're artists, they're not doing that anymore. They're typing prompts in over and over again. I don't even want to think about how much energy that uses. But they're doing that until they get something that someone wants to buy after in quote sketch review, which is now Mid Journey printout review after styles are chosen, now the designers have to sit down and look at these images that are, you know, not drawn from reality and figure out how a garment that looks like that would be made and created. Create the tech pack, the technical directions, the patterns, etc for these garments, which apparently is just like such an epically laborious task. This whole thing actually slows down the efficiency of design teams because they're tasked. I mean, if you've ever looked at some AI art, there's always something weird, right? That defies gravity or makes no sense. And with AI generated clothing designs, it's even wilder because you're like, is there a seam there? Should there be a seam there? Should there be a zipper? What's happening here? Like, you have to make something that doesn't exist real. Once again, not necessarily a creative endeavor, but definitely something super frustrating. And what I heard from a few people who are being forced to work this way is that it slows things down. But they haven't been given more time to get this done. They also haven't been given more staff. So what they're doing is just working round the clock to create designs using AI that then they then have to translate into real life. And it's so depressing, right? So here we are, designers no longer getting to be designers. The human creativity element of creating product is no longer there. What happens when humans are no longer doing the work of creating clothing? Well, from a purely artistic standpoint, is giving the job of design and creation to machines, removing the art from fashion? Because I think it's important to remember that fashion is art. It is creativity. It's just unfortunately, right now it's become a commodity. But if we're absolutely removing designers from this and now they're just mid journey technicians, there's no art left. Furthermore, could fashion hit a wall creatively when AI runs out of new ideas? Because no more ideas have been created by humans now they're just all being mushed up together by AI so there'll never be a new style ever again? I don't know. Will fashion become less interesting and appealing could this actually result in more unsold inventory, more over consumption customers because nothing ever feels good? That's pretty depressing, right? And of course, as I mentioned, all these designs in quotes being created by AI means, oh my God, so much energy being used, huger carbon footprint for this industry that already has massive negative environmental impact. Like what? But, but the thing is, in theory, if you get AI to design your clothes, maybe you don't need as many designers and then you save some money, right? It's not really working that way yet. But like, could it. That's what these companies are hoping for. Or at the very least right now, they're saving money on lawsuits. I guess I just worry overall, when we take the humanity out of fashion, we're removing the art and creativity from fashion. And this is particularly concerning to me because fashion began as an art form and it remains a personal creative expression. It's a space for creative innovation and evolving vision. How does that change when humans are no longer doing the art part yet still doing the manufacturing? Right. That part will never change. Note that no one is working to automate the most difficult aspect of fashion clothing production. But many are selling solutions for product design, visual merchandising, copywriting, all of the creative aspects of fashion. They're saying, no, we're going to outsource all of the things that bring fun and joy to creators and customers. We're going to give all that to machines. But y'all can keep packing up boxes at the warehouse. Very grim. Furthermore, right now, now brands have been replacing human models with AI generated models. And I mean like models wearing the clothes. This is strictly a cost saving measure. But I'll tell you, the savings most likely are not as high as the environmental cost of using completely AI generated models. Last year, Levi's came under fire for partnering with a company called lalaland AI to use AI generated models. Levi's felt, at least this is what they said publicly, that this move would decrease return rates by showing products on a more diverse range of bodies. Okay, listen, time out here. Love this idea of showing clothes on a more diverse range of bodies. Great idea. Here's my thing, Levi's. Why don't you just hire a more diverse range of human. Human models. Ultimately, Levi's backpedaled on this. I don't know if they're still doing it, but it was. People were outraged, as they should be. But I also have to ask, how do ideal fake humans impact our collective mental health and comfort satisfaction with our own bodies? It's not good I'm already like so deeply troubled by the filtering and stuff that I see on social media already. And yeah, it fucks with my own concept of like my appearance and where it fits into the world. World. I cannot imagine if I was suddenly only seeing fake people. Nope, not there. Not. Not into this. This also raises the ethical implication of models rights to their image. Because AI generated models are based off of the faces and bodies of very real models and humans. This is such. Like I said, AI might maybe, maybe could help mitigate the impact of the fashion industry. But right now the industry is only using it in just the sketchiest, most dangerous ways. The thing is, we, all of us, you, me, we have the power to change the way fashion is using AI. There are ways that we can change it as individuals and even people who work within this system according. Okay, as individuals. One thing I have learned in my decades of work as a buyer within the fashion industry is that only two things force it to change the law and fear of lost sales and lost customers. So tell brands that you refuse to support brands using AI to replace designers and models. Vote with your wallet. Boycott companies using AI in ways that do not align with your values. Values. Tell your friends and family about the environmental and ethical impacts of AI in the fashion industry. And push your elected representatives for regulations around fashion's use of AI. So that's on an individual level. If you are a passionate fashion industry professional, which you might be, you're listening to this. I want you to see past the hype of AI. It's really hard. It took me me to so much reading to finally get a grasp on what's really happening. See past that hype and recognize that it is not helpful without large scale systemic change within the fashion industry. Share that information with your peers and your cross functional partners. Ask the difficult questions in meetings. Otherwise called being Amanda at work. This is maybe why I get laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. But ask why are we opting to use these tools knowing that the environmental impact is significant? What are the measurable benefits of these tools? How will this work in tandem with larger process changes and recommend tools that may be beneficial or advocate for increased headcount meaning hiring more people. We cannot not let this industry remove the people from fashion because when they do that, fashion is no longer art. It's just shit that we buy. And I for one am tired of being sold garbage. I know you are too. Thank you for listening to this episode of Clotheshorse. Written, researched, edited all the things by me Amanda Lee McCarty, if you like what you're hearing, of course. As always, always leave a rating or review. Tell your friends, subscribe all these things. Like I said, I'll be taking off for Japan this week. You'll still see me on the Internet. We have so much to talk about while I'm gone, so stay tuned for all of that. And thanks, as always, to my other half, Mr. Dustin Travis White, for our music and audio support. Bye.