What will clothing be like 50 years from now? “It will be very much like it is today,” says Doris Kincade, professor of Apparel, Housing, and Resource Management. The 1950’s clothing predictions for 2000 — ‘space suits’ and metallic fabrics — “may have been affected by the just-started space race,” she says. “But today, instead of people on Earth dressing like astronauts, we see the space shuttle crews working in polo shirts, running shorts, and athletic shoes.”

“The fashion industry is not revolutionary. It is evolutionary,” Kincade says. “In the past 15 years, women’s fashions have revived styles from every era since the turn of the century.”

One of the reasons clothing styles evolve instead of taking great leaps is that clothing is very personal. “Clothing is a person's most intimate environment. It affects how they look, how they act, how they feel,” says Kincade. “High technology in the apparel industry will not be seen in design, but in the manufacture, distribution, and merchandising of apparel.”

New synthetic fibers will be used but will have the look and feel of natural fibers, according to Kincade. Clothing will 'wick' or pass moisture through the fabric away from the body, breathe, and insulate like the natural fibers, but will be easier to care for, have better shape retention, be more comfortable, and wear better than their natural counterparts.

Virginia Tech clothing and textiles researchers are studying body shape, size and fit of apparel, and methods of manufacturing and merchandising fibers, textiles, and apparel.

"Doctoral student Seiji Endo is researching changes in apparel manufacturing from mass production to single items made individually for a specific person," Kincade notes. "Levi Strauss is already producing a line of custom-fit Levi's jeans. One could call it mass customization. The shopper tries on sample jeans and selects color and style. The store takes the customer's measurements and sends the information to Levi Strauss. Two weeks later the customer has custom-made jeans. Unfortunately, most people are not willing to pay extra to get custom-sized jeans, and most manufacturers are not equipped to handle this type of production."

Master's student Michele Jones is researching body types. Her current study focuses on tall women. She has found that there are two body types: women with a long torso and women with long legs. With today's sizing standards, a manufacturer makes a tall-size garment proportionately tall. This means they miss half or more of the tall-women's market, leaving these women to "make do" with the sizes available for them.

Speaking of fit, clothing and textile researchers found that people who need to wear protective clothing either do not always wear it or wear it incorrectly because it is uncomfortable. Graduate students Ann Hennessy and Angkhana Tultrairat are examining methods to test protective garments for comfort. Fibers are needed that have one-way wicking properties to carry moisture away from the body and provide temperature control while protecting health care workers, fire fighters, and agricultural workers from air- and moisture-borne pathogens and pollutants.

Doctoral student Cindy Regan is looking at how to apply integrated (or concurrent) manufacturing techniques to the U.S. apparel industry. She is working with the faculty in the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering to develop a system to completely design and construct a garment on a computer. This allows everyone involved in the process to know all the properties of a garment before the first sample is even sewn.

"However, textiles are not like a car," Kincade notes. "There are many differences in fabrics. You have to consider color, fuzziness, thickness, weave, fiber, texture, feel, the way it cuts the light. We need improved graphics capabilities, including better color compatibility from computer to computer."

Computer limitations are also the barrier to predicted changes in marketing: shopping on the World Wide Web and the other high-tech options. Kincade has a matching grant from the Virginia Tech Foundation to look at improved ways of presenting merchandising by computer. "The average customer does not yet have the computer capabilities to know how a garment will feel to the touch, how it will fit on their body, and what they will look like wearing it. What we need is a virtual reality technology that is not only capable of showing us an object, but one that will let us feel it, put it on, and look at ourselves," she says.

"In fact, successful companies will be virtual companies, designing, manufacturing, and marketing by computers linked around the world. Companies will be able to design and manufacture better and cheaper. Many will be smaller, more flexible companies, and they will be the ones that thrive," Kincade concludes.

Doris Kincade can be reached at 540-231-7637.