Both Technological Innovations and Consumer Demand Will Be Key

Which is going to drive what? Are scientific and technological developments going to create new demand for performance wear? Or, is consumer demand going to drive advances in R&D?

Francois Boussu: Both. New textile materials can provide additional features to a protective garment and then help to better protect the worker. Or to provide the same performance with comfort improvement. Demand coming from customers will help to better understand their needs and then can contribute to dedicated specifications. Integration of sensors in the garment with dedicated data management device and communication system will help to better measure the lifetime duty of the protective material. Thus, emerging technologies coming from mobile phone apps will help to monitor the level of performance of the protective garment and help the worker to be informed of the real level of protection while in use.

Rudrajeet Pal: Both technology-forward and market-back innovations will be coming up. It is likely that in the sportswear segment user-driven innovations will be more prevalent while in protective clothing segment it’s more R&D driven, e.g. for defence, protection from extreme weather and hazardous man-made conditions.

Xianyi Zeng: New technologies on innovative materials will enable deliver more products with multiple functionalities. The international competition in the textile markets make the textile/fashion companies quickly design and manufacture new products. The requirements of consumers are becoming more and more diversified. All these issues drive advances in R&D.

That's the future. Was it also so in the past? Surely "functional textiles/fabrics/clothes" as an area of specialisation is rather news [though the demand for functionality would be as old as the history of clothing itself). Comments, please.

Francois Boussu: Absolutely, the need for protection of workers is as old as the textiles industry. However, more testing machines allow complete analyses of the material performance and could be done at the molecule scale. By the same, standards used to test the material performance are increasingly complex and standardised to better stick to real conditions.

Rudrajeet Pal: For sure. Every year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) publishes its Global Risks Report, and even though there are certain recurring risk categories related to climate change and biodiversity loss, there are always new risks emerging, e.g. recent ones like livelihood crises and defence collapse. Clothing forms our “second skin” and are required to add protection to human body in any such risk condition. So, with emerging risks the demands for functionality and performance from clothing will also evolve continuously and spontaneously.

Xianyi Zeng: In the past, this trend still existed but the demand is less so important. The consumers were less demanding and less diversified, and the competition less fierce.

Though there are differences in terms of details, many broadly agree that four criteria (anti-microbial, UV cut, temperature regulation, water/oil repellence) are what is going to see maximum traction in terms of R&D. Do you agree with that argument? Or, are there areas that are not much discussed? Please elaborate.

Francois Boussu: To limit only to four main criteria the potential of R&D development seems to be too restrictive. In general manner, three main criteria located at each summit of a triangle can be useful to define a protective solution. These criteria are: the required performances (as antimicrobial, UV cut and water/oil repellency plus many others linked to conditions of use), the comfort (as the temperature regulation plus many others that help to provide a better fitting to the worker) and the costs (material and processing)

Rudrajeet Pal: In what terms “maximum”? Perhaps I can agree that these are some “basic” (or even traditional) functional requirements for high-performance clothing. But functionalities gain traction based on its application. If it’s for defence application, bio-chemical protection will be crucial. If it’s sportswear, apart from those mentioned above functionality is rendered by wearable properties, e.g. piezo-resistive or piezo-electric functionalities etc. For PPE/medical textiles, breathability is important.

Xianyi Zeng: I generally agree with that argument. The most important trend is to make clothing more "smart" or more "intelligent" by developing auto-regulation mechanisms, including not only temperature regulation but also other issues (humidity regulation, pressure regulation, colour regulation, etc). The functionalities will be developed around human comfort and protection requirements: thermal comfort, visual comfort, tactile comfort and movement comfort, protection against virus, hot climate, and so on.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a renewed interest in functional medical textiles. Do you see this segment booming in the coming years? The COVID-19 pandemic may be waning away, but there's that lurking apprehension of the next pandemic. Comments, please.

Francois Boussu: Before the pandemic, medical textiles were increasingly in use and new textile material as cardiac valves seemed to be promising for the future. As a scientist I can’t say when there will be a new pandemic, but it has been proven by epidemiologists that the spread of new viruses will occur again in the next decades. Thus, more protective garments should be stored by governments but not at any price. Innovative solutions to detect the real efficiency of protective solutions during their lifetime duties are urgently needed.

Rudrajeet Pal: Yes, definitely.

Xianyi Zeng: Yes. Protection requirements are increasing. It is not only for facemask requirements but also for protection clothing and human health monitoring carrier. Communication is also a requirement. We can imagine that an intelligent garment can be used for online monitoring of patients' symptoms and communication with medical services. In summary, considered as a "second skin" for human body, functional clothing will be more developed with multiple, smart and auto-adjustable functionalities.