Fashion, as we know, makes up an ever-changing world of what’s “in” and what isn’t. Technology has been very much “in” over the last few years, and we are seeing more and more examples of pieces of wearable tech. We explore this merge of fashion and tech in greater detail below.

The rise of wearable tech

The merging of fashion and technology has come about due to the rise in the use of wearable tech, with items such as the Jawbone for measuring fitness or the Apple Watch to measure just about everything else in our lives.

These items weren’t just designed as geeky looking gadgets; they were designed to look fashionable and to fit in with the rest of our attire, almost as though they weren’t there at all. New pieces of tech that didn’t have fashion in mind seem to fail, such as the Google Glass, which have now had its sales halted.

Wearable tech has come about due to the age of connectivity that we are now living in. Smartphones revolutionised the way that we stay connected, and now smart watches make that life even easier. Now manufacturers want to go even further with this, with ideas and patents for smart watches.

We measure life in notifications, likes, and data. This means that we no longer just want to go for a run, we want to measure the data from that run when we’ve finished. While, of course, not giving up on our sense of fashion.

The rise of e-commerce in the fashion industry

Fashion is a traditional industry, but industries that stay traditional in this day and age typically fall behind the competition. Think Blockbuster closing after the rise of new technology services like Netflix.

Fashion, traditionally, meant going into high-street stores and shopping around, but the rise of e-commerce has been slowly killing this. For the first time ever, more people shopped online in 2015 than visited physical stores, and it is likely that things will only keep going this way.

While 85% of people still don’t fully trust shopping online, they still shop online due to the ease it brings to their lives. The fashion industry has had to find new ways to keep up with the change in online shopping, and so it is unlikely that you will find a high-street store with no online presence.

The merging of fashion and tech

As well as the increase of e-commerce and online shopping, the fashion industry is finding other innovative ways to merge their world with the world of tech. For example, some places are now using intelligent dressing rooms where customers can “try on” various items of clothing without having to actually physically put the clothes on.

Other ways of merging the two industries together is through the use of virtual reality, the latest buzzword in the tech world. This takes e-commerce to the next level, and in some ways helps to restore the trust in online shopping people don’t have as they can see the things they are buying much more clearly in virtual reality.

Technology is now very much fashionable. It’s fashionable to own the latest smartphone or the newest gadget, even when items such as the iPhone 7 aren’t that different to the iPhone 6. It’s hard to say whether its technology that is now driving fashion or if it’s the other way round, but it’s safe to say that the two worlds have now very much merged, and manufacturers must keep this in mind when bringing a new product or item to the market.