Future Fashion Factory secures 100th partner

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Aug 2, 2019

An industry-led project created to explore and develop new digital and advanced textile technologies to improve the sector’s agility has gained its 100th member.

Future Fashion Factory is a five-year programme led by the School of Design at the University of Leeds and funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the UK government's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Wyedean Weaving Co Ltd, a West Yorkshire mill which supplies uniform to the UK Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces, is the latest to join its list of industry partners.

Ads

The R&D cluster launched in 2018 with just ten core partners and three academic centres, including Burberry, the British Fashion Council, UKFT, Yorkshire Textiles, the University of Leeds, and the Royal College of Art.

More retail businesses, textile mills and independent designers have joined since then, with the latest additions including IBM, Patrick Grant’s Community Clothing and young design brand Cunnington & Sanderson.

“We are delighted to be involved with Future Fashion Factory and glad to see so many other Yorkshire textile mills already involved,” said Rosie Wright, business development manager at Wyedean.

Suzy Shepherd, founder of Yorkshire Textiles and co-director of Future Fashion Factory, added: “We’re thrilled with the extent of the support Future Fashion Factory has received across the industry, from independent designers to global brands and Yorkshire’s prestigious mills. Members of our community share a fantastic bank of knowledge, skills and creativity which is already enabling new collaborations and making a real difference to businesses.

The R&D project is exploring how to shorten product development cycles to increase agility, reduce waste and shift from linear to circular economies.

£5.4 million are being invested to explore these and other issues as part of the Creative Industries Cluster Programme.