Textiles in 2063

In an emerald ocean of smoke and lasers, during Open Perspectives in Stockholm in June 2023, we showed brands, stakeholders, and decision-makers what a radically transformed textile industry can look like in 2063.

The science-backed audio experience, created in collaboration with Planethon, was a story told in a spoken-word format from a future generation to the change-makers of today – showcasing
what a possible future textile industry could look like if we dare to transform ourselves and the system.

The scientific base is a large number of industry reports, brimming innovations and interdisciplinary papers from sustainability science, the planetary boundaries framework and the Earth for All book.  

The scenario highlights that we are at a pivotal moment in history where the decisions we make today have the possibility to form our future. The textile industry has a possibility to be part of leading the change, to listen to the experts, support innovation, and pioneer new methods. To help build inspiring narratives and stories that ignite positive emotions and drive transformation. It starts with each and every one of us. 

Textiles in 2063 – the script

Oh.. hello *echoes hello’s in diverse voices  

Finally we meet 

Welcome to Twenty-sixty-three, and a radically transformed textile industry. 

You caught us in our dressing rooms, production sites, and design moods. Let us just put something on.  

*Contemplating exhale  

What hangs in here is digital, one-of-a-kind, regenerative, on demand. Dethreaded, rethreaded, seeded, tested, healed, redone.  

Each piece that much more precious when it meets a need beyond the want. Some regulate our mood, express a dream, and keep us warm. Some can protect our health, feed soils, clean our oceans, store old carbon.  

Everything in here is accessible to all. Equal access to our commons, turned everyone’s prosperity, turned trust. Some pieces tell the stories about those who made them. Stories of leadership, of difference, of love, bravery, of triumph.  

Everything’s considered in our pick. Artificially collected, automated, transparent trace – no human could keep track of it. What serves all best will be our choice. Ah. That one – that absorbs the pesticide remnants. The bees last month, now it’s the frogs turn, human helper AI says.  

Back when all got connected to where dresses grow, creativity began to overflow. Algorithms here weigh equally our voice. The power shifts made that all our choice. Uploading an idea, as we get dressed. It’s okay if it is never used, so much of what’s uploaded never is.  

That inflow of new ideas gives us space to evolve. It gives diversity of responses, back-up plans, and everyone a role, and… silly innovations like the resonant fibre body cooler. Just in case the heatwaves come back.  

Creative inspiration stems from feedbacks and constraints. System knowledge, futures literacy, regeneration – put to work. To this competence we test not only what to wear, but check incentives, regulations, how to empower us to dare. To go even further.  

We never take without a give. Its social justice, we’re environmental justicing. It is not a state we’ve reached, but a balancing act. A work in progress.  

We could not have come here without the first few. Yes, – you.  

– 

With sharing your own thing, came our access to everything. The riches you unlocked.  

Not the kind of riches you knew in your time. No. We don’t loan from the future anymore.  

Even though, back in the day, our – now for all – earth worked for just a few. It came a point when everybody knew, that what had appeared to be owned, was really high-interest loans. From all of Us.  

Parts of the system led alone, put more than one in our debt. What followed was a mess. 

It was hit and miss there for a while, creeping closer to two degrees. Heatwaves struck. Each one took not only people and material, but knowledge accumulated over time. To this day, we don’t know what was lost. We suspect it was a lot.  

Garment workers, crop producers, politicians and consumers, suppliers, brands, designers, activists, media and scientists, joined the leading seat. Intervention to say the least. All represented, to balance what was out of whack. The technical solutions had been around for a while. Now you could, with vengeance, act.  

Know-how spread like wildfire. Social and eco movements on the boards, crop producers turned designers, workers entered leading roles. Designers got to know farmlands, air clearing not just in the global north. Some brands got into politics, advocating the incentives they had missed. Others felt a little sore.   

But you started long before. 

– 

The hardest part was not the new. The technical or very cool. But shedding the old, the long overdue.  

Back then  

When delaying was the new denial, and many tried to look the same. Strived for dopamine, no lasting gain.  

Some said, or maybe they just thought it, that climate change will not affect me here  

Some said, or maybe we can hear the shouts, “But I’m doing it right now!”  

After years of just-work-no-life balance. You called out: Imbalance.  

–  

Like that you gave us twenty-sixty-three  

How impossible it seemed, yet possible, you made this industry    

You rose to face your Waterloo – what is it? – and pushed through   

If what we have told turns out true, then in fact, We owe you.