1. The core argument: technology is not an answer, but an amplifier
In this section, the author deliberately reframes technology away from the familiar “solution narrative.” Technology, she argues, does not inherently make fashion more sustainable, more ethical, or more humane. Instead, it amplifies the dominant logic of the system in which it operates.
If the system is driven by scale, speed, and cost minimisation, technology will intensify overproduction and disposability. If the system is oriented toward transparency, on-demand production, and value preservation, technology can enable restraint rather than excess. The machine itself is neutral; the values embedded in its use are not.
2. Why 3D printing is presented as almost utopian
The extended discussion of 3D printing is not naïve futurism. It serves two structural purposes in the argument.
First, it destabilises the two industrial axioms that have governed clothing production since the 18th century:
- a product cannot be sold before it is made;
- the more you produce, the cheaper each unit becomes.
3D printing and on-demand manufacturing introduce a theoretical alternative: sell first, produce later, thereby eliminating the logic of speculative inventory and its associated waste.
Second, this optimism is strategic. By presenting technology as potentially emancipatory, the author prepares the reader for the later reversal: the same technologies can just as easily entrench destructive systems when coupled with scale and capital.
3. Iris van Herpen and Michael Schmidt: legitimising technology as culture
The detailed portraits of designers such as Iris van Herpen and Michael Schmidt are not digressions. They perform a legitimising function.
Through them, technology is repositioned not as an industrial shortcut but as a creative language. The shift is subtle but crucial:
- craftsmanship moves from handwork to code;
- the “tailor” becomes the CAD programmer;
- the garment becomes an interface between body, material science, and algorithm.
By aestheticising technological production, the author makes it culturally acceptable—甚至 desirable—within fashion’s value system. This allows her later critique of automation to land with greater force.
4. Unmade: proving that “slow” can exist at scale
Unmade functions as the conceptual bridge between couture experimentation and industrial reality.
Unlike artisanal slow-fashion narratives that rely on scarcity or moral appeal, Unmade demonstrates a systemic intervention: mass customisation without inventory. The significance here is not the product but the infrastructure. Sustainability is treated as a supply-chain problem rather than a consumer virtue.
The author’s implication is clear: meaningful reform cannot rely solely on taste, ethics, or individual restraint. It must be embedded in production logic.
5. London’s “Fuck You” ethos: resistance from within
Dilys Williams’s remark about London’s confrontational spirit reveals an ideological undercurrent. Innovation in fashion does not emerge from aesthetic refinement alone, but from structural opposition—working within the system while actively resisting its power dynamics.
This is not romantic rebellion; it is institutional friction. The author signals that real change requires antagonism toward entrenched production and distribution hierarchies.
6. The moral turn: Vonnegut, war, and technological violence
The sudden invocation of Kurt Vonnegut, Dresden, and nuclear weapons marks a decisive tonal shift. Technology is no longer discussed as creative potential but as historical evidence of catastrophe.
The parallel is intentional. Just as industrial and military technologies enabled mass destruction, fashion technologies—when aligned with volume, profit, and distance—can normalise ethical blindness. The mention of Issey Miyake as a Hiroshima survivor grounds this abstraction in lived memory.
7. Robots: contradictory arguments, shared inevitability
The author catalogues opposing claims about automation—job destruction versus job creation, waste reduction versus hyper-production—but then collapses the debate into a single conclusion: automation is inevitable, and it will radically reshape how clothing is made and sold.
The key insight is not which side is correct, but that argument itself does not halt structural transformation.
8. “Digital consumers, analogue supply chains”
This phrase crystallises the business logic of the section. Consumer demand has become real-time, data-driven, and individualised, while supply chains remain slow, speculative, and inventory-based.
Automation, in the author’s framing, is less about machines replacing humans than about aligning information flows—connecting desire directly to production.
9. The final claim: value collapses when production disappears
The concluding sentence—“If you have no idea how something was made, you cannot appreciate it”—is the ethical foundation of the entire argument.
Fast fashion is not merely cheap clothing; it is a psychological condition produced by distance. When labour, skill, and material transformation are invisible, garments lose moral and emotional weight. Disposability becomes rational.
The author suggests that sustainability ultimately depends on restoring visibility, not nostalgia. Whether through craftsmanship, transparency, or intelligent systems, people must once again perceive clothing as made rather than merely delivered.
10. The unresolved tension
The section deliberately ends without resolution. Technology can:
- enable intimacy or accelerate detachment;
- reduce waste or multiply it;
- humanise production or erase labour entirely.
The “rage” in Rage Against the Machine is not directed at machines themselves, but at the unexamined systems that deploy them. The future of fashion, the author implies, will not be decided by innovation alone—but by which values are encoded into the machine.
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