Our latest ‘I’ve got an Idea’ Fund award goes to WEAR THE FUTURE CIC – a youth-led sustainable fashion organisation connecting circular fashion, practical youth opportunity and community participation.
Second-hand garments are individual objects with unknown histories. Unlike newly manufactured fabric, they may have been worn, washed, stored, altered or repaired many times. During ordinary inspection, faint stains, tiny holes, weakened areas, pilling, uneven fading, concealed repairs and other condition issues can easily be missed – particularly on dark, patterned,textured or reflective fabrics.
The idea is to build and test a novel “Garment Forensics Station” to find out whether switching between 5 different optical conditions can make particular types of defect easier to identify.
Optical inspection technologies already exist in industrial textile manufacturing, scientific imaging and conservation. Those systems are generally designed for laboratories, specialist conservation settings or continuous inspection of newly manufactured fabric rolls.
Small second-hand clothing businesses still rely predominantly on visual checks under ordinary lighting. Their garments are also much more varied than new fabric: every piece may differ in construction, material, colour, pattern, age and condition.
The team’s technical idea lies in:
• combining optical methods in one accessible, switchable station;
• designing a mounting system for complete, differently shaped garments;
• finding useful lighting geometries and intensities for different fabrics;
• testing whether individual modes reveal different categories of defect; and
• establishing whether the system is useful and practical in a real second-hand clothing operation.
We found Wear the Future’s idea with its potential application for valuing and appropriately pricing second hand clothes intriguing and liked the fact that it’s a challenging DIY technical experiment which may or may not work and that exactly fits the spirit of our fund. We wish the team well.
The Prospectory 