Unmade, Transforming Fashion by Working With The Industry

Overproduction, heavy discounting and waste that impacts environment, Unmade has the industrial solution to change this.

It was a year ago that we wrote about the world of Unmade. Founded by Royal College of Art graduates, Ben Alun-Jones, Hal Watts and Kirsty Emery, Unmade, previously called Knyttan, uses coding to power knitting machines as though they are 3D printers. They are proving to be far cry from being just another big knit craze, by ensuring that nothing they produce will be unwanted.

Now we revisit, to see what they are up to now.  They are still about enabling customisable products that can be manufactured on an industrial scale. “Fashion is about expressing your individuality through the clothes you wear, but current industrial manufacturing fails to account for this. Clothes are designed for the ‘average’ meaning many products are not fit for purpose. The result is overproduction, heavy discounting and waste, impacting companies’ bottom lines and the environment.
 Unmade is the industrial solution to change this,” shared someone from the Unmade team.

Knitting

Founded in 2013, Unmade used their technology to launch a series of interactive knitwear products in collaboration with artists and designers. They’ve since worked on projects with the British Fashion Council, designed an award-winning catwalk collection with Christopher Raeburn, and built a concept store within Selfridges.

ALSO READ: Knitwear Using Technology to Disrupt Fashion

Described by BoF as “making the tools of factory production available at the click of a mouse, with no penalty for short productions runs”, they have come up with a solution that comes down to their system which is made from three key elements: personalisation editors, e-commerce integration, and on-demand manufacturing. It is these three key elements that enable their partners to take customised designs straight to production, for the same unit cost as mass production.

Hal Watts stands in front of Helga. Image: Emiko Jozuka.

They have won Drapers Digital Award (Best Use of Innovation 2017), British Fashion Council (Futures Award Digital Coalition 2016) and Retail Week Tech & Ecomm Award (Digital Launch of the Year 2016) too name a few, Unmade continues to work in collaboration with other innovative global brands and powering them with Unmade technology.

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Founding Editor in Chief at FashNerd.com | editor@fashnerd.com | Website

Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.