Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology

From a Panting of Lace Makers to a Lace Biennale

Sometimes you find correspondences between art and contemporary events: a painting from the 1800s can indeed still make you think about a modern exhibition.

The painting "The Lace-Makers of Venice" by Egisto Lancerotto (1847-1916) depicts a colourful scene: outside the deconsecrated church of Saints Filippo, Giacomo and Apollonia in Venice, where the Jesurum lace factory was located, lace-makers intently working on their pillow lace designs, are interrupted at their work by a merry band of revelers.

The painting reminds us that the Lace Bienniale is currently on at Burano's Museo del Merletto (Lace Museum) and in the rest of the lagoon.

The event offers the chance to lace fans to see exhibitions and take part in talks that will hopefully introduce younger generations to this art. Burano's Lace Museum preserves examples of lace that allow visitors to discover the differences between the Burano stitch and the Venice point, or between Burano lacemakers, who operate with needle lace (merletto ad aghi), and those at Pellestrina who are specialised in the production of bobbin lace (merletto a fuselli).

Burano's Scuola dei Merletti (Lace School) has also a rich archive in which it preserves albums of drawings. Usually, they featured preparatory drawings printed on green paper. From 1900 onwards this colour was indeed chosen because it was the most relaxing shade for the eyes and it was therefore suitable for long and meticulous processing like that of lace.

The drawings may inspire modern interpretations of lace (lace NFTs anybody?), but the Biennale is instead a way to promote the candidacy project for the recognition of Italian Merletto (lace) as a UNESCO intangible heritage.

Useful or Untruthful? The Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) Gets Suspended

The Higg Materials Sustainability Index (Higg MSI) was launched in 2012 by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), a nonprofit alliance of more than 100 fast fashion companies (including H&M, Norrøna, Nike, Primark, Walmart, Boohoo and Amazon, among the others).

This material assessment tool was designed to evaluate and compare the environmental impacts of materials, trims, and packaging, used in the apparel, footwear, and home textile industries and drive the development of materials sustainability strategies within companies. The tool also measured environmental impact in different areas, including global warming and water scarcity. The index was supposed to develop a common language based on consistent data and verified scores, encouraging collaborative goal setting and industry-wide improvement, but, two days ago, SAC announced the index will be temporarily suspended.

In June, the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) warned H&M Group against using the Higg index to support its environmental claims and warned there would have been economic sanctions if the index was still used by 1 September. The NCA also investigated claims by Norwegian outdoor brand Norrøna, that also uses the Higg index on its website, and concluded that the data was misleading to consumers, and the claims about an organic cotton T-shirt was "likely to be false and untruthful" and in breach of Norway's Marketing Control Act. 

As a consequence, SAC announced it will pause the consumer facing transparency program globally. The Higg Index seal and scorecard will therefore be removed from the participating online retail platforms while further evaluation takes place. Yet the Higg MSI and other Higg Index tools remain active and available to all users on the Higg platform. 

Activists are not surprised, as they previously expressed their concern and skepticism about an index that assessed the sustainability of a product partially rather than throughout its lifespan. Besides, the index doesn't indicate garments containing microplastics, and the data offered are the ones uploaded by the brands themselves.

Earlier this month, the New York Times criticised the Higg MSI highlighting how scores on the index favoured synthetic materials made from fossil fuels rather than natural fibres such as cotton and wool (SAC issued a statement explaining this is incorrect as the dataset is supposed to be used to make more informed decisions about how to improve the impact of a material, rather than as a generalised measure of the sustainability of a material). The data used for the scores also caused a controversy as they are based on studies by companies producing synthetic materials (for example, the data for elastane, were based on a study by elastane producer Invista).  

So far the Higg Index was mainly criticised by companies operating within the fashion industry (natural yarn manufacturers, for example), but the involvement of the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) in the debate may mean consumers will become more aware of the Higg Index and of its data sources.

SAC announced it will work with the NCA and other consumer agencies and regulators to better understand how to substantiate product level claims with trusted and credible data, highlighting they want to empower consumers "to make better decisions". Yet, they should be aware that, while consumers are becoming more interested in learning about the environmental impact of what they wear, they also dislike the greenwashing practices adopted by some companies operating within the fashion industry, and are perfectly capable of making decisions such as boycotting companies lying about their commitment to sustainability and the environment.

Courage & Innovation as Entrepreneurial Lessons for the Future

We are all very aware of brands and some fashionistas wear them as a badge of honour, but, quite often, we don't know the stories of companies behind specific products even though we may actually wear them every day. Luxottica, is one of them.

The biggest holding manufacturing and selling eyewear and ophthalmic lenses, the company was in the news in the last two days as its founder and chairman, Leonardo Del Vecchio, died yesterday at 87 in Milan.

A self-made man, Del Vecchio was born in Milan in 1935 from a family that originally came from Puglia. His father died five months before he was born, and his mother had to go to work to support her children. She therefore asked an orphanage to take him in, so that he wouldn't have been exposed to bad company while she was at work.

He remained at the orphanage till the end of the secondary school and, at 15, Del Vecchio started working for a company producing medals and trophies. The owners of the factory convinced him to enroll in the evening courses at the Brera Academy and study design and incision.

At the end of the '50s Del Vecchio moved to Agordo, in the province of Belluno, where he opened his first venture, selling spectacle frames.

In 1961 he turned it into a company, Luxottica, with 14 employees. At first, the company mainly produced eyewear parts for other manufacturers, but, in 1967, while continuing to manufacture parts, the company launched its first line of branded glasses. Four years later, Luxottica only focused on its own lines of eyewear; in 1995 the company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and, in 2000, also on Milan's.

In the meantime, Luxottica's portfolio expanded to include proprietary brands such as Ray-Ban, Persol and Alain Mikli, but also licensed brands including Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Bulgari, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Valentino and Versace, just to mention a few one of them.

In 2018, Del Vecchio promoted the merger between Luxottica and Essilor of France (that mainly focused on lenses), creating an eyewear colossus, EssilorLuxottica S.A., publicly listed on the Paris Stock Exchange and boasting more than 140,000 employees and sales in more than 150 countries.

Del Vecchio was into innovation and collaborated with Google in 2014, creating Google Glasses, and met in 2019 Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg. Last year, Del Vecchio met again with Zuckerberg to discuss visors and smart glasses for the metaverse, but also launched in collaboration with Facebook, Inc. the first RayBan Stories, smart glasses that can record videos, take pictures, make phone calls and play music.

The second richest man in Italy, Del Vecchio was considered an enlightened entrepreneur: when he turned 80, he gave as a present to 8,000 Italian employees 40,000 shares (for a total value of 9 million euros). But this wasn’t a new practice: in 2011, for Luxottica’s 50 anniversary, employees were given shares worth 7 million euros.

His legacy, stands in two lessons: first and foremost, he treated the company as his family and his employees with respect, something that many modern entrepreneurs focused on becoming richer and richer simply do not do. The second lesson comes from his biography in which he stated that Italians are great artisans and artists, but the secret to success stands in pushing forward and be braver, launching your own ventures, for example, and never stopping at the first successes, but keeping on pursuing innovation.

Abortion and Contraception Pill Artworks

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, abortion bans in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah already went into effect. While others will follow, abortion clinics in these states have already been halting operations and cancelling appointments. Women who needed an abortion are being redirected to states where the procedure is still legal (but will they manage to get on their lists on time?), while, those women who are still in the timeline to take abortion pills are ordering them online (in case of need, non-profit organisations, such as Aid Access, send pills all over the world).

Can art inspire us to ponder about this theme? Definitely. The work of Amsterdam-based artist Eva van Kempen comes to mind: inspired by medical achievements and by the procreation process and control humans have over fertility, van Kempen, who, trained as a goldsmith and jewelry designer but then expanded her practice with more experimental pieces, considers herself an "artivist". Van Kempen started making jewelry using expired medical materials after she was hospitalized for an illness. She first started incorporating pill packs in her pieces, but then also included intravenous systems and syringes.

Between 2018 and 2020 the artivist created the "Planned Parenthood" series that also featured the "In Case of Emergency" bracelet with morning-after pill and the "Lun/mar/mer/jeu/ven/sam/dim", bracelet, with expired contraceptive pills in packaging.

In 2020 she created the "Freedom as Luxury" that featured a key design, a Lady Liberty crown made with expired abortion pills, to comment about abortion laws, conceived as a thermometer of democracy and of respect for human rights. Together with Women on Waves (WoW) - the Dutch non-profit organization for free choice and women's rights founded in 1999 by the Rebecca Gomperts (who often wears Van Kempen's creations; Gomperts was among the 100 most influential people of the world in 2020 by Time magazine), and Bart Terwiel – van Kempen launched the Lady Liberty Abortion Pill Crown as an Instagram face filter two years ago.

The filter, by augmented-reality artist Chloe Karayiannis, featured the crown and the slogan "Liberate abortion pills". When you opened your mouth, the pills were released from the crown. The filter was scheduled to be released at the beginning of March 2020 to raise awareness about a method of abortion that remains highly restricted in the United States. The release date was going to coincide with the US Supreme Court's hearing of the case to challenge Row v. Wade. Yet Instagram tried to edit the message "Liberate abortion pills" into "Liberate abortion", and then eventually the filter was banned. Instagram mentioned article 4.3.c. of its terms of use as a reason for rejection of the filter; The article states, "Content must not promote alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or pharmaceutical medical products, nor be published by brands associated with such products." But the filter was'’t promoting any medical products as it didn't include the name of the abortion pill producer. Accepted on Facebook for a short time, the filter was then taken down also on this social media.

Van Kempen recently reposted on her Instagram account the Women on Web campaign image featuring her Lady Liberty piece (first picture in this post, a photo by Pedro Brito Da Fonseca), but there are other pills that may end up being targeted by the Supreme Court. Justice Clarence Thomas hinted at other cases to re-examine, and contraception may be the next issue.

Art-wise Susie Freeman and Dr. Liz Lee created in 1998 a gown which is parte of the Wellcome Collection – "Pharmacopoeia - Come Dancing". The ballgown is decorated with over 6,000 contraceptive pills - enough for 26 years - and, at the waist, instead of a jewel clap, there is a Lippes Loop or coil that provided intrauterine contraception for the same amount of time.

In 1999 the creative duo also came up with the "Jubilee" gown. Part of the Royal College of General Practitioners collection, "Jubilee" is a wedding-style dress made of fine nylon monofilament, knitted on a Dubied industrial knitting machine. Enclosed in rows of tiny mesh pockets there are 6,279 contraceptive pills. Allowing for a couple of breaks to have children, the packets represented would provide contraception for a woman from the age of 22 to 50 years old. It is titled "Jubilee" as a celebration of her silver wedding anniversary.

Freeman and Lee often used pills in their artworks, but these pieces were inspired by their conversations with other women regarding contraceptive information provided to them. The artists found out that many women using the loop for example had questions which remained unanswered by doctors, whilst those women taking contraceptive pills did not consider the quantity they would need to consume. The artworks therefore aimed at informing women about contraceptive methods.

Maybe it is about time to relaunch the pharmoacopoeia trend in fashion, but mainly focus on contraceptive and abortion pills and on designs and artworks that can provide information for a younger generation of women.

Flop of the Meta Avatar Wardrobe?

It wouldn't be incorrect to state that fashion operates in a fascist way: it does indeed impose on consumers a colour, a silhouette, a pattern or print, and more or less forces these trends upon them. You may not like them at first, but, then, gradually, that colour, silhouette, pattern or print that looked unusual or repulsive to you, will suddenly turn to your eyes into something acceptable, even desirable. Then it will turn into the norm and, eventually, it will be replaced by a new trend and the cycle will start again. So, the system usually doesn't really listen to consumers, but imposes something onto them. But are consumers really so gullible? Well, not really.

Take the latest news in the tech and fashion category: in June it was announced that designs by Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne would soon become available for avatars on Metaverse Fashion Stores. Yes, you got it, a clothing store for your Meta avatar representing a "virtual you" on your social media accounts.

Founder and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke about the avatar store in a live video stream with Instagram's Director of Fashion Partnerships Eva Chen. During the live video, Chen showed print-outs of the possible new looks modelled on Zuckerberg's cartoonish Meta avatar (that looks even more insufferable than him IRL...).

Among them there were Balenciaga's motocross leather look, Prada's white Linea Rossa nylon ensemble and Thom Browne's signature gray suit with sporty stripes. Eva Chen also showed on Instagram some of the looks as modelled by her avatar. The prices for the looks go from $2.99 to $8.99, but the Avatar Store will offer a selection of free clothing options as well (but that doesn't include designer pieces).

In the video, Zuckerberg explained, "A huge part of how people express themselves is through what they wear and fashion," and while that's true, you wonder why the designs they presented are so banal.  

The passion for digital fashion and digital wardrobes started a few years ago, but exploded after Covid hit us in 2020 and people started looking for something fancier for their selfies, something not even real as there was nowhere to go because of lockdowns, or something cool for their characters in videogames.

But the fun of the best digital fashion designs stands in the fact that, well, they are digital and, therefore, you can do extraordinary creations that change colours, shine like the brightest stars in the universe or flow like quicksilver mercury.

In this case, instead, the digital clothes presented looked banal (surprisingly they opted for Thom Browne's more tamed designs, rather than for his most surreal creations or dog-shaped bags) and consumers posted rather negative comments on the original Instagram post launching the outfits.

One user commented that they wouldn't buy that particular Balenciaga outfit IRL if it came at $8.99. Another pointed out that Balenciaga’s sweatshirt wasn't even a new design, but was taken from a 2017 collection (well, the user was actually right), while another user claimed that, if they had spare cash, they would donate it to a food or diaper bank (after all, why investing in a digital outfit, when there are more important things to support in the real world?).

So, it looks like you can't fool consumers, after all. But why did this project go wrong? Probably for different reasons: while they initially must have thought that, if people buy Bored Ape NFTs, they may be buying cringing digital representations of fashion designs, no matter how banal they look, the first and foremost reason why this initial launch wasn't well received is probably the fact that it doesn't look special at all.

You'd indeed expect something astonishing for your digital avatar and not something mildly boring and already seen (commenting on Instagram, consumers complained this avatar wardrobe doesn't look good nor it is innovative). Second, buying designer clothes for your avatar is not necessarily needed, if you do so you're probably obsessed with a brand or maybe you do it because the digital items will represent a modest moment of shopping spree madness compared to what you'd spend for a real designer outfit. Zuckerberg's idea is to make in this way things more accessible to people, showing how digital wardrobes may be the ultimate democratisation of fashion. Yet, that may be debatable, as, with all the crises the world is going through, spending money on high-end clothes for a digital avatar when you may not have money to buy food, seems a questionable choice.

We'll see what will happen in future for the Meta wardrobe design-wise, but, for now, we know that it will expand and become a proper marketplace: Web3 and Meta are bringing new opportunities for different brands and Meta hopes the digital fashion marketplace will include one day more famous brands and also fashion houses that create only digital garments.

But, if you're a brand and you want to join in, well, keep in mind that consumers are demanding and will not be easily satisfied nor tricked, so, please, make an effort to do something genuinely intriguing and original. And - next time - no Zuckerberg avatar as model, please.

Every Woman is at Risk: Roe v. Wade Gets Overturned by U.S. Supreme Court

It's 2022 but human rights, and in particular women's rights, are constantly under threat. Terrifying stories of rapes and femicides happening all over the world are constantly on the news, while yesterday was a dark day for American history. The Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case, trampling on women's rights to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

With Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion. The case was brought by Norma McCorvey - known by the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"- who, pregnant with her third child in 1969, wanted an abortion. As she lived in Texas, where the procedure was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life, her attorneys filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional.

The new decision states that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and, as a consequence, 26 states will be banning abortion immediately or as soon as possible.

This is shocking considering that the majority of Americans are actually in favour of the procedure and that, quite often, the most outspoken pro-lifers also seem to have a passion for firearms. The blame should go to 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, who pro-choice before being elected, confirmed three Supreme Court Justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) while he was in power, ensuring the court would lean conservative. The decision to overturn the landmark is a display of male power and control, plus a way for Republicans to win the votes of Christians as they did in the '70s and create a sort of moral majority, rather than a political majority. 

"It's a sad day for the court and the country," US President Joe Biden said from the White House. "With Roe gone, the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk."

Former First Lady of the US Michelle Obama issued a statement in which she said she was "heartbroken", but urged people to get up and find the courage to keep working towards a more just America, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced, "On this issue the Supreme Court does not get the last word, the people do. And we are going to fight back."

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, highlighted how the decision represented a contradiction for the court as the day before they said states cannot make laws governing the constitutional rights to bear arms, while yesterday they said the exact reverse. "The hypocrisy is raging, but the harm is endless," she stated, calling the decision "an insult and a slap in the face to women about using their own judgment to make their own decision about their reproductive freedom."

While marches were organized all over the US, world leaders reacted, calling the abortion ruling a backwards step. Anger at the decision reached also the Glastonbury stage where Billie Eilish condemned the overruling, dedicating her song "Your Power" to what had happened.

The undemocratic decision will hit hard millions of women, especially those ones not wealthy enough to go somewhere else and have an abortion. Thoughts go to all those women who were booked to have an abortion and who may not be able to do so, or who may have to borrow money and go to another state to have an abortion.

As we all know, prohibiting doesn't make something go away, it just drives it underground. In the case of abortion, it is unthinkable to go back to pre-Roe v Wade times when women would have unsafe abortions and risked to die to preserve the right to control their destinies.

The decision of the Supreme Court is also surprising as it doesn't seem to take into account official reports on pregnancies and abortions. The United Nations Population Fund issued a statement explaining that, "Data show that restricting access to abortion does not prevent people from seeking abortion, it simply makes it more deadly." According to the UNFPA's 2022 State of World Population report, "nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended, and over 60 per cent of these unintended pregnancies may end in abortion. A staggering 45 per cent of all abortions around the world are unsafe, making this a leading cause of maternal death."

Now there are tangible fears this decision will encourage other targets as conservative Justice Clarence Thomas hinted at contraception, gay marriage and LGBTQ rights. Another appalling consequence of this decision may be the fact that this will encourage anti-abortion activists and politicians in other countries too. Roe v Wade inspired indeed other countries to make abortion legal; its overruling will empower anti-abortion voices everywhere, threatening reproductive freedom and the safety of women (bear in mind that there are countries such as Turkey where women's rights activists already risk arbitrary long prison sentences or even lynching for their fights against domestic violence and femicides and for campaigning for the right to work, access to education, the possibility of divorce or the termination of a relationship and the right to self-determination over one's own life...).  

Women are at the centre of the fashion industry that has therefore often expressed its support of women's reproductive rights. In May, when a Supreme Court document threatening the abolition of Roe v. Wade was leaked, Gucci promised the company would provide travel reimbursement to any U.S. employee who needs access to health care not available in their home state.

But there are other companies opting for this solution, including Gap, Estée Lauder and Condé Nast. In May, Levi Strauss & Co. issued a statement similar to Gucci's, highlighting that its employees are "eligible for reimbursement for healthcare-related travel expenses for services not available in their home state, including those related to reproductive health care and abortion."

Gucci's Cruise 2020 collection also featured a "My Body My Choice" jacket and designs with the date "22.5.78," referring to the day the Italian statute 194 about the social protection of motherhood and the voluntary interruption of pregnancy was established.

Other figures in the fashion industry may lend a hand to support legal abortion, including influencers and models. Books have recently been appearing in a lot of pictures of celebrities and influencers (some claim there are even book stylists who suggest to their clients which books they should be seen carrying around...).

It would be good to see more pictures of people carrying feminist novels and essays (well, obviously, rather than just carrying them it would be better if we read them first...). An inspiring, obvious choice, remains Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale".

The Canadian author actually auctioned an unburnable edition of "The Handmaid's Tale" in June. The special edition of the book was created to anticipate the possibility of the US Supreme Court ruling reversing the right to abortion.

Atwood's book - the story of Offred, one of the Handmaids of the fictitious supremacist, totalitarian state known as the Republic of Gilead, who are forced to provide children by proxy for infertile women of a higher social status, the wives of Commanders - was rediscovered thanks to its TV adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss. "Handmaid" costumes, red cloaks with white headdresses, have become a familiar sight at protests for reproductive and women's rights.

According to the American Library Association, "The Handmaid's Tale" is among books most often challenged or banned in US schools. Put on auction at Sotheby’s the fire-resistant edition of the book, designed to protect this vital story and stand as a powerful symbol against censorship, was sold on 7th June for $130,000 (all proceeds went to Pen America).

But there's food for thought that may prompt us to ponder about abortion, and then stand up and act also in Atwood's new collection of essays, "Burning Questions".

In the book, Atwood compares enforcing childbirth to slavery, but also wonders why the state that forces women to give birth, then abandons them. "Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put," Atwood writes. "If the state is mandating enforced childbirth, why should it not pay for prenatal care, for the birth itself, for postnatal care, and – for babies who are not sold off to richer families – for the cost of bringing up the child? And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty? If women are providing a needed service to the state – albeit against their wills – surely they should be paid for their labour. If the goal is more babies, I am sure many women would oblige if properly recompensed. Otherwise, they are inclined to follow the natural law: placental mammals will abort in the face of resource scarcity." 

Will the Text-to-Image AI Help or Destroy Creativity & Fashion?

They say Artificial Intelligence will enhance the life and work of many of us in future. But can we actually believe this statement? In the last few months, neural network DALL-E 2 has been both praised and dreaded. The exciting (for those who love the progresses of Artificial Intelligence) release from research lab OpenAI with a name that collides Disney’s Wall-E and Dalí’s name, is an image generation Artificial Intelligence based on text.

You type a description, the AI looks at billions of pictures found on the Internet and then comes up with its own version of that image. Algorithms are trained to go through massive amounts of data in a few seconds, and, in this case, DALL-E 2 does not just recognise an object, but it is capable of creating relationships between two objects, so it can predict what the image inspired by the caption you entered should look like and then create a new image based on something unexpected.

Artificial Intelligence is making some great progresses: images created by the AI a few years ago weren’t as defined as the ones created by DALL-E 2 which is based on OpenAI's GPT-3 algorithm (that can generate texts that are close to what a human could write).

Examples on the DALL-E 2 site, show us what the neural network can do when replying to the prompt "An astronaut riding a horse in a photorealistic style" or a "A bowl of soup as a planet in the universe as a 1960s poster" and "Teddy bears working on new AI research underwater with 1990s technology", introducing also the variations it can produce on a theme, and producing more images based on that description.

DALL-E 2 creates scarily clear images and excellent photorealistic content: those who tried it so far (please note that at the moment DALL-E 2 is not open to all, but you can join a waiting list to try it), state that it has a reasonable understanding of objects and, for what regards styles or clothes, it is more precise if you specify if you want to see the clothes on a runway or on a mannequin.

What's impressive is the way DALL-E 2 can reproduce specific artistic styles, from charcoal or pencil sketches to paintings in the style of various artists and artistic movements. It gets instead confused when there are more people in an image and, when it creates variations, finds it challenging to keep consistent with the representation of the characters' faces. 

As it happens with innovative technologies, DALL-E 2 has some pros and cons. The main advantage is that DALL-E can generate in just a few seconds digital images of all sorts, based on exactly what we are looking for.

So imagine you had to come up with an idea for a poster or a moodboard, the prototype of an object or an image for a special card or invitation, you could create it in a very short time and consider also variations in colours, scenes and settings. 

For what regards violent content, hate and adult images, or the risk of creating deepfake images, luckily, researchers limited the ability for DALL·E 2 to generate such images and used advanced techniques to prevent photorealistic generations of real individuals' faces, including those of public figures without their consent. DALL-E's content policy does not allow the AI to generate images with violent, adult or political content and the AI doesn't generate images if the filters identify text prompts and image uploads that may violate the policies.  

The disadvantages of such a system are mainly connected with ethical and copyright issues. First of all, the results produced by an AI depend from what it has been fed with during its learning process. There have been cases of "racist algorithms", built on datasets fed by young white men and DALL-E 2 seems to have the same issue and at times shows some limits. When it comes to visualizing a business person or a lawyer, it conjures up a man, while it offers images of women when the text prompt asks for a nurse.

But there may be more intricate issues when it comes to trademarked logos and copyrights. You may indeed asks DALL-E 2 to produce an image showing "Mickey Mouse drinking from a can of Coca-Cola", and the AI may produce a Mickey Mouse-lookalike with a can of Coke with its trademarked logo, an image that may be considered as a double infringement of copyrights.
 
Which leads to another question about authorship: who is the author of the final image? You write the text and the AI bases the image on your text, so you definitely have the main idea, but it is the AI that executes it. So who owns the copyright in that case? You, the AI or both? Besides, if you ask for the image of a cat doing the dishes and the AI creates a cat based on somebody's cat, would the owner of that pet also own the copyright on the final image?

There's more to ask, in connection with fashion as well: will we soon have a DALL-E 2 generated collection? After all, we have already seen start up companies launching lines of dresses created with the help of machine learning algorithms.

While we're not sure about a proper collection, DALL-E 2 has already been used for a magazine cover for Cosmopolitan. The image was created in collaboration by Cosmopolitan editors, OpenAI's workers, and Digital Artist Karen X. Cheng who spent around 100 hours experimenting with DALL-E.

The team first tested the AI with a series of prompts going from "1960s fashionable woman close up, encyclopedia-style illustration" to "a strong female president astronaut warrior walking on the planet Mars, digital art synthwave."

Refining the prompt was the trick in this case and the final prompt - "a wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art" - generated the perfect image that was then used for the cover. 

The cover actually looks rather good, which leads us to another key question - will DALL-E 2 put out of job artists, graphic designers and creative minds, maybe even fashion designers?

Obviously DALL-E will become more precise as the time will pass, but the problem with text-to-image AI is the same you get with AI producing translations. Literally, translations done by an Artificial Intelligence are fine, but the system doesn't manage to grasp certain nuances and expressions, so there will always be the funny sentence or the incomprehensible line that will have to be rechecked by a human translator. In much the same way, you may argue, there will always be the need for graphic designers who may have to apply their skills to the image produced by the AI to alter or refine it. 

For the time being, though, graphic designers shouldn't worry so much. As stated above, DALL-E 2 is not available to all but you can join a waiting list to try it. In the meantime, only its lower-grade replica, DALL-E mini is open access. 

So far, DALL-E mini has proved to be a reliable source for memes: the system is the same, but the AI in this case often generates distorted and disturbing images of faces or mangled body parts that seem to protrude from the wrong places.

So type the name of a politician you loathe doing something ridiculous such as riding a whale in a clown costume and you may get a lot of distorted faces of the type you may see in a horror film or in your nightmares. Social media are literally bursting with images of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson doing bizarre things, totally meme-able material. This is generating an aesthetic of its own and you can be sure that at some point Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga will do a T-shirt with some of these horrific DALL-E mini memes. 

That said, if you try and refine your search, you will realise that even the mini version of DALL-E is making progresses: ask it to visualise a Prada branded teapot and it will do so, coming up also with plausible models of the object with a distorted triangular logo in Prada's style; ask it to come up with Memphis Milano designs or Memphis Milano shoes and well, it will attempt to create objects in the style and using the colour schemes and patterns of the Memphis Milano design collective.

So what's the final verdict, will AI help or destroy creativity? Guess it may definitely help, if used by clever human beings, but, for the time being, let's hope Balenciaga spares us a DALL-E mini T-shirt with some distorted or blurred obnoxious politicians.  

Fashion Forensics: A Surprising Bikini Top Deterioration

A while back we did a forensic study on the deterioration and degradation of polyurethane coating in garments. It’s summer, so let's look at the deterioration of the elastic thread in a bikini top.

The study focuses on two identical bikinis by Jaked, a brand founded in 2008 in Italy, that also makes technical and high-performance swimwear for athletes and often uses thermo-welding to eliminate seams and offer maximum comfort.

We will call the bikinis Exhibit A and B and consider the degree of deterioration they went through in a few years' time.

Exhibit A

Description: Exhibit A refers to a fuchsia bikini by Jaked.

Fit: Basic low-rise bikini with a triangular top that offers minimum coverage and bottoms that fit large to size. The bikini does not feature any metal/sequined/beaded elements, the only decoration is a ruffled trim. The ruffle is made with the same fabric of the bikini and it is applied on a thin silicone strip stitched onto the bikini.

Feel: The fabric is pleasant to the touch; the bra strings are soft and elastic.

Material: 80% Polyamide - 20% Elastane, the white lining (the bikini is fully lined) is 100% elastane.

Labels/Warnings/Washing instructions: The washing instructions explain the bikini should be handwashed at 30°.

Storage: After every summer, the bikini was handwashed and stored back in its original clear plastic pressure pouch.

History: The bikini was bought 4-5 years ago; it was worn regularly at least 4 days a week (for 2 hours a day) for three months a year (between June and August). "Worn regularly" in this case means the bikini was worn at the beach and in the sea. After a day at the beach, the bikini was immediately handwashed according to the instructions.

Deterioration: The bottoms became slightly looser, but that often happens with swimwear, so it is not surprising. The top showed signs of deterioration mainly where the strings were knotted around the neck and the back. The strings are around 8 mm thick, but deterioration reduced them to roughly 4-5mm.  

More recently something unusual happened to the strings: after wearing the bikini top in extreme temperatures (over 33°C) and walking under the sun and along the beach for several kilometers (roughly 4 km), the elastic thread inside the strings melted adhering to the body and sticking to the neck and the back.

Adhesive traces on the skin had to be removed with after waxing wipes. Even after handwashing the bra, the strings remained sticky and unpleasant to the touch.

Exhibit B (Identical to Exhibit A, but in black)

Description: Exhibit B refers to a black bikini by Jaked.

Fit: Basic low-rise bikini with a triangular top that offers minimum coverage and bottoms that fit large to size. The bikini does not feature any metal/sequined/beaded elements, the only decoration is a ruffled trim. The ruffle is made with the same fabric of the bikini and it is applied on a thin silicone strip stitched onto the bikini.

Feel: The fabric is pleasant to the touch; the bra strings are soft and elastic.
Material: 80% Polyamide - 20% Elastane, the  black lining (the bikini is fully lined) is 100% elastane.

Labels/Warnings/Washing instructions: The washing instructions explain the bikini should be handwashed at 30°.

Storage: After every summer, the bikini was handwashed and stored back in its original clear plastic pressure pouch. 

History: The bikini was bought 4-5 years ago; it was worn regularly at least 3 days a week (for 2 hours a day) for three months a year (between June and August). "Worn regularly" in this case means the bikini was worn at the beach and in the sea. After a day at the beach, the bikini was immediately handwashed according to the instructions.

Deterioration: The bottoms became slightly looser, but that often happens with swimwear, so it is not surprising. The top showed signs of deterioration mainly where the strings were knotted around the neck and the back, but nothing as bad as the other top happened.

Yet, you can see there are already signs of the elastic deterioration happening: little filaments of elastic thread are indeed coming out of the bikini top strings. The bottoms also show deterioration of the elastic thread around the edges of the ruffles. The deterioration is more evident in this bikini than in the fuchsia one.

Conclusions

Swimsuits go under extreme deterioration when you wear them often and for a few years consecutively, that's perfectly understandable, but it is curious to see an elastic that should be used in a garment exposed to high temperatures melting. I previously saw a children's swimsuit melting when exposed to a jet of hot air from a hair-dryer in the changing room of a swimming pool, but, in this case, the bikini was not exposed to the direct jet of hot air, only to extreme temperatures.

Was it the extreme temperature that caused it? Was it the fact that it was already showing signs of deterioration? Probably both. It remains curious that this happened to a product by a brand that boasts about its products, such as its engineered competition swimsuits, being tested in swimming pools and in laboratories (well, they may have forgotten to test bikinis, though, as they are not for competitions...). Usually their swimsuits are also resistant to UV light (UPF 50+), but ,well, maybe their elastics aren't.

The final point of this quick forensic analysis is not showing the deterioration per se, but wonder if garments such as swimsuits may release micro filaments of elastics or microplastics (tiny plastic fragments from bigger plastic items such as bottles, but also synthetic T-shirts) in the sea, materials that may be harmful to the environment and to animal and human health. Researchers are currently working on systems that may manage one day to clean the sea from such polluting micro materials, but we haven't got anything definite yet.   

The good news, though, is that scientists from the Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University recently unveiled on the Nano Letters journal a bionic self-propelled 13 mm long robo-fish capable of removing microplastics from seas and oceans. The small yet resistant robo-fish can pull up to 5kg in weight, and adsorbs bits of microplastics on its soft, flexible body because the organic dyes, antibiotics, and heavy metals in the microplastics have strong chemical bonds and electrostatic interactions with the material the mini-robot is made of. 

Let's hope we will find a solution for microplastics. But, returning to the bikini, there is another question about it: how should we dispose of such garments. A worn out bikini top like the fuchsia one in this post may not be recycled and would probably end up in a landfill. How can we avoid this?

There are brands that have developed collections of swimsuits from recycled plastic, but will we manage one day to create a bioelastic thread (maybe from algae or from food waste?) that could be used in swimsuits and avoid in this way to harm human and marine life? Let's all try and find the answer to these questions, in the meantime, I'll go and find a new swimsuit.

New Alternative Iridescences & Bioluminescences

In 1982 Ugo La Pietra designed a chair covered in a visually striking iridescent fabric. Yet contemporary designers may be turning somewhere else to create their iridescent effects.

Graduates of the MA Biodesign course at London's Central Saint Martins, for example, tried looking for alternative sources to come up with original shades and colours: Célina Camboni is a biocouturier specialising in luxury and fashion management. Her passion for a greener fashion industry prompted Camboni to look for sustainable colour effects.

The result of her research is "Emotional Iridescence: A Living Colour", her graduation biocouture research project in which she developed a bio-based iridescent coating.

The wings of the Morpho butterfly were the starting point for the research that led her to create a bio-film that mimics the natural phenomenon of iridescence in nature, made of more than 95% natural and renewable materials.

The coating is indeed made with an innovative nanofabrication process that uses the most abundant biopolymer on earth - cellulose. Unlike most traditional dyeing processes, the coating does not require large amounts of water and does not use any chemical pigments, allowing it to resist fading over time.

Camboni applied the bio-iridescent film to deadstock recycled fabrics to show how we can reduce waste and, at the same time, create a sustainable and innovative coating that has also got a physical and emotional value since it induces positive chemical reactions in our mind, body and soul.

One of the pieces Camboni made for her end of the year project is a voluminous coat as fluffy as as a fur one, but made with offcuts from old collections coated in her bio-iridescent film and sewn with recycled thread and waste materials. These experiments proved to the young designer that the process is scalable and compatible with many different textiles.

Another graduate, Marthe Frenod, also looked at luminescent materials with her "Realighty: Waterborne Bioluminescence" project, inspired by a research on the toxins and pollutants released by the textile industry into global aquatic ecosystems.

Frenod wondered what would happen it the pollution produced by fast fashion existed on our clothes and entered our skin and, using a water atlas generated pattern to give visibility to toxins and pollutants existing in universal water steams, she created a silk organza garment that raises awareness about global hygiene.

The design features patterns generated by bacterial growth: the Vibrio Harveyi bacteria - capable of emitting bioluminescence when the microorganisms are disturbed - were cultivated in the laboratory (Frenod carried out her researches at the École Nationale Supérieure Des Arts Et Industries Textiles - Université de Lille, and at the GEPEA (UMR CNRS 6144) laboratory in Saint-Nazare) and then screen printed with ecological fluorescent dyes. 

It is exciting to see young designers focusing on sustainable projects that can improve the fashion industry, or have a real impact on our lives. Hopefully, these graduates will take their researches further and influence the fashion industry in a positive way with their findings. The projects are on display at London's Central Saint Martins until today as part of the "Particulate Flows" MA Biodesign Degree Show.

As the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Comes into Force in the US, Will Fashion Companies Comply or Change Markets?

Between 2020 and 2021 quite a few fashion companies issued statements about their concerns regarding the use of cotton from China's Xinjiang province and vowed to no longer use it. Members of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), the group promoting sustainable cotton production, announced last year they were suspending their approval of cotton sourced from Xinjiang, mentioning concerns about human rights. Previously, human rights groups and activists and United Nations rights experts accused indeed China of using mass detention camps, forced labor and sterilization of women, on Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government repeatedly rejected accusations that it is holding Uyghurs in internment camps in Xinjiang (it is estimated that, since 2017, Chinese authorities detained as many as one million Uyghurs, subjecting them to forced labour), stating that the camps are education and training centres designed to fight extremism.

Last year many Western brands and fashion houses (many of them members of the BCI), including H&M, Nike, Uniqlo, Adidas, New Balance, and Burberry, were removed from Chinese e-commerce platforms and apps. The backlash against these companies at the time wasn't probably triggered by their statements about imports coming from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), but were probably linked with the US-China tensions.

In July 2020, the US government issued an advisory to warn businesses about forced labor in Xinjiang; then, in December of the same year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that, with a "Withhold Release Order", the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel at all U.S. ports of entry would detain shipments containing cotton and cotton products originating from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) and its subordinate and affiliated entities, as well as any products made in whole or in part with or derived from that cotton, such as apparel, garments, and textiles.

In March last year, the US, Canada, the UK and the European Union placed new sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China issued its own measures then, sanctioning European lawmakers and institutions, so the backlash against the apparel and fashion companies last March may have been the consequence of the current relationships between these entitles and China. But there are new developments about this story.

At the beginning of May this year, researchers at the Agroisolab in Jülich and the Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences (both in Germany), announced that an isotope analysis found traces of Xinjiang cotton in garments by Puma, Adidas, Hugo Boss, German outdoor wear brand Jack Wolfskin, and fashion company Tom Tailor.

The isotope analysis is a test employed by archaeologists or forensic scientists for a series of applications, including reconstructing past environmental and climatic conditions, and a variety of other physical, geological, palaeontological and chemical processes, such as tracing the geographic origin of organic or non-organic substances.

The findings contradicted the brands' promises not to use supply chains that may have employed forced labour, but also made ordinary consumers realise that, for brands and groups, vowing not to use cotton from China's Xinjiang is easier said than done. It is indeed estimated that, while 20% of the world's cotton comes from China, 84% of that comes from Xinjiang and it remains difficult, or even impossible, for companies to be 100% sure about the source of their cotton for different reasons. Access to their own supply chains in China is indeed complex and restricted by the communist government of Xi Jinping, besides Xinjiang cotton is widely employed and often mixed with cotton from other places, so tracing the provenance and providing evidence may once again be extremely difficult.

Things may become a bit more complex now, though, as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a ban on cotton from forced Uyghur labour (cotton is labelled as a "high priority for enforcement" in the act, along with a wide range of products such as tomatoes and the polysilicon found in solar panels, all of them widely produced in Xinjiang), comes into force from today in the US. The wider-reaching UFLPA was approved by the Senate last July, and Congress in December. It was subsequently signed into law by current US President Joe Biden.

So, from today, under the UFLPA, US Customs and Border Protection officials will block or seize all shipments of products partly or wholly made in Xinjiang that arrive at American ports, unless the companies involved provide the relevant certification to avoid fines of up to $250,000.

"Today is an important day in the fight to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party's genocide and forced labor of Uyghurs and predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)," US Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley and two other lawmakers stated in an official note.

"The United States is sending a clear message that we will no longer remain complicit in the Chinese Communist Party's use of slave labor and egregious crimes against humanity. From now on, entities both inside and outside the XUAR who seek to import to the U.S. must show that no part of their product was manufactured using slave labor." There is actually a bit of concern about the act as some U.S. businesses claim the federal government hasn't provided sufficient guidance on steps to avoid having imports seized at the U.S. border. Yet the U.S. actually provided some instructions to importers about how to provide the evidence and, a week ago, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP) issued a 17-page document with guidelines.

Concerns remain, though, about the businesses that may either stop exporting goods to the US in order to avoid having their goods seized, and start exporting to other countries garments made with Xinjiang's cotton. It is only natural to wonder when and if, at some point, the EU will also launch a plan against forced labour that may have an impact not just on fashion, but on the exploited migrant workers picking fruit and vegetables (tomatoes in particular) in Italy.

But, while we wait to see what the European Union will do after the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), how will fashion companies manage to prove the source of their cotton? Well, some of them plan to use the blockchain and artificial intelligence to trace supply chains. Yet there are some disadvantages about the blockchain, including the fact that it consumes too much energy, and its implementation is a costly process. Besides, it can be complex, inefficient and harder to scale, it can be slow when there are too many users on the network and, last but not least, the data on the blockchain is immutable. 
  
It will be interesting to see how companies in the fashion industry will react to the UFLPA in the next few months: so far, quite a few of them pretended, denied or simply lied about a variety of issues of concern for consumers such as sustainability, traceability and forced labour. There is an increased demand for transparent supply chains and, who knows, maybe the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act will finally manage to improve transparency at least for what regards forced labour.