We spoke to Stephen Russell, Professor of textile materials and technology at the University of Leeds, for British Textile Week to discuss how UK textile companies can work Future Fashion Factory and the new Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC).

We discussed research exploring the shift from linear to circular economies, data-driven design, late stage customisation and aesthetic communication, as well as how UK textile companies can get involved with academic research or apply for funding to support innovation.

What is Future Fashion Factory?

Future Fashion Factory is a large industry led research and development programme. It was originally a £5.4 million investment from Government then also attracted significant investment from the industry as well to set it up. There are more than 450 industry partners, and it is based on a collaboration between the University of Leeds, University of Huddersfield, and the Royal College of Art. The programme is all about increasing the competitiveness of the UK fashion and textile industry. It features a host of different activities, mainly centred around very targeted research and development to increase the agility and competitiveness of the UK industry.

Can you talk through a few of the Future Fashion Factory funded projects that involve UK textile firms?

There are over 40 that we’ve supported through the programme but to give you a flavour, a lot of the work focuses on high value, luxury-based textile materials and manufacturing innovation in those areas. Some of the work covers new materials, for example, looking at methods of sustainably producing cotton, using up to 80% less water, and then making those fibres into yarns and fabrics. That’s UK innovation. We don’t grow cotton in the UK to any great extent but the technology to do it more sustainably is of global interest. We’re also looking at extracting fibre from plants grown in sailine agricultural conditions, to extract fibre that would be suitable to be used for synthetic fillings and outdoor jackets and coats, and recyclable materials to replace PTFA for windproof, waterproof and breathable clothing.

There are lots of things going on in manufacturing to look at integrating artificial intelligence into luxury fabric design and production to reduce lead times, and also a lot of work around new digital tools to quantitatively quantify quality, giving a constant prediction of what fabric properties we’re going to get before we make the fabric based on data. So instead of it being based on the memory of the person running the machine, we were using data now to predict what the fabric properties and even the handle might be as a result of changing different process settings. And also weirdly, the precise sort of movie quality simulation of fabrics and garments, so that you’re able to have a conversation about how the fabric portrayed how even how it will feel over the internet with a customer A to B or B2C. This would mean there is less necessity to make physical samples making the process much quicker and saving waste.

That is just a bit of a taste of what is happening through the programme; it is a mixture of materials, textile manufacturing, innovation, and also the sort of digitalisation work going on to to help the industry be more competitive in the future.

Who does Future Fashion Factory work with?

Our reach goes includes some of the biggest household names and big PLCs (Burberry is one of our founding partners) through to a lot of SMEs who are manufacturing in the UK, many of them from for actually hundreds of years in some cases. And one of the most exciting things, I think, is being able to forge new research collaborations between some of these emerging small companies and designers, with the SMEs and with the larger companies too. As the innovation and the ideas are coming from different places, being able to deliver them into new capability requires collaboration to enable it to happen and be operationalised. It really is around industry-led collaboration with the academic expertise being harnessed to help to provide the solutions that the industry needs.

Can you tell us about some of the core research things that started alongside the funded projects?

There are there are four main areas. The first around, shifting from linear to circular economies. So that’s not just about new materials, and methods of reducing waste, but it’s also about looking at ways of making those opportunities economically viable, so that it can actually happen. And that means there are opportunities often to increase margins, and create new business models that are actually quite, quite exciting and competitive.

Another area is I suppose best described as data-driven design. So there are a series of colleagues who are harnessing artificial intelligence and machine learning to help provide insights that will allow products to be designed more appropriately. This involves decisions that we have to make about well, such as what colour should this product be? What design attributes and features should it have? The reason why that’s important is because we can get them hopefully closer to designing the right product for the right customer at the right time. But also making decisions that don’t lead to unsold inventory, right, or overproduction. Or decisions that end up not turning out to be commercially ideal, because, you know, we ended up having to discount a load of a load of product. So data driven design is, is quite an important area and there’s a lot going on there.

With regard to manufacturing, we’re also looking at a whole series of processes that we describe as late stage customisation. These are new ways of manufacturing that enable yarns and fabrics to be rapidly and cost-effectively customised near the end of their production. For example, if you can take a standard product and tweak it in lots of different ways at a later stage, depending on shifts in demand or in consumer preferences. So it’s making our processes in textiles more agile in a way.

And finally, what we refer to as aesthetic communication. What that actually means is communicating the normally incommunicable – so how do you communicate how a fabric feels right? This means accurately simulating properties of garments and fabrics digitally. If it’s done very well and immersively, there’s an enormous opportunity to reduce the time it takes to design and manufacture products and get customers to accept them B2B, B2C and DTC. Hopefully we’ll get to a position where you can decision made without so many physical samples, which means you don’t have to put fabrics and envelope and send them 3,000 miles to the customer somewhere else. You can have the dialogue online to a greater extent. That requires a blend of digital technology developments and hardware to enable it. It all sounds quite advanced but I think we are getting closer to that and it’s certainly moved faster as in the last couple of years, There’s a lot needs to still be done to make that available commercially.

How can UK textile manufacturers get involved with Future Fashion Factory now?

Future Fashion Factory is an industry-led programme and we’re very open to proposals coming in from industry, which is where the vast majority of the projects that we’re doing have originated. So any company or companies working together that believe they have an innovative proposition, can just make contact with us.

The latest call is a six-month sustainability challenge which closes at the end of February so there’s a there’s a window at the moment for us to put in funding to co-fund. That particular one is around new circular economies, which could be opportunities for the UK, so I would encourage any company that wants to have a discussion about innovation to get in touch. That covers inventions can end up being innovations, something that makes economic sense, and a piece of work that the company might want to do, please make contact with us and we’re very happy to talk about how we can help.

What are the next steps for Future Fashion Factory?

We’re continuing to forge industry-led R&D collaboration. So even when this programme completes, we will continue with that same way of working. We’re putting together projects and leveraging external investment from elsewhere so we’ll continue very much to make sure that what we’ve started will continue. To support the ongoing development and commercialisation of some of the projects and technologies that we’ve been developing is important to us, with those industry partners, and potentially with external investors as well.

Can you tell us about the Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC), which launched last September?

LITAC is a new institute, but it’s not new in the sense that we’ve been doing textile research at the University of Leeds for nearly 150 years. It’s a multi-disciplinary university research institute, which draws on the strengths of the University of Leeds, with the principal objective is to address global challenges in in textile and colour industries through collaborative research and innovation. It is built on 150 years of history but we’re looking forward not backwards. We’re looking at those challenges that the industry faces today and we think we’ll face in the future. A lot of our work is based around developing innovative science and technology. Fundamentally that’s new materials, new processes, new methods and manufacturing processes. There’s a large group of people working collaboratively across many, many different fields and in textiles, not just for clothing but also technical textiles and the vast array of applications and markets that textile materials find their way into.

How could UK textile manufacturers work with LITAC?

We have collaborative projects, often supported externally, by UK Research and Innovation, for example. There are industry funded PhD students and other researchers work working in the institute. There are knowledge transfer partnerships which involve industry, but there also different mechanisms, depending on what it is that the company wants to do and the timescales involved. It is very much a collaborative Institute and we’re very aware and open to real world needs. We’re not about coming up with ideas, and then expecting industry to think they’re great. We have the humility to listen and we want we really want to make sure we’re working on the right problem. So I think in the first instance, if you have an idea just make contact was very happy to talk to you.

What are some of the key research areas that you’re looking to explore in the kind of short and medium term?

Not surprisingly, there are some major challenges around sustainable development and clean growth agenda. For example, how do we how do we actually operationalise circular economies rather than just talking about them? And to do that at scale. We know that the business model is really important there.

So that’s one area, but also there are increasing impacts due to global population growth, and the ageing population as well around healthcare, for example. There are countless consumer healthcare and industrial products that contain textile materials, or depend on colour to ensure that they work. So these are all areas that have our attention.

Some of the projects running at the moment cover innovative recycling and reuse technologies. For example, my colleagues are working on textile materials that that are going to be designed to be resistant to the release of micro plastics in the form of short fibre, which means building the products at source so they are more resistant to shedding fibre. They are also working on developing innovative laundry treatments to promote the longevity of fabrics so that last longer and look better for longer.

There are also lots of developments in in technical textiles, including fabrics that have the ability to diagnose infection. So you don’t need to go to the hospital to know that the wound is infected if you’re wearing a particular dressing.

There are lots of very diverse things going on, which are all responding to a real-world need right now.

In the longer term, we’re also we also have to be mindful of some of the external environmental changes around legislation and regulation. For example, we potentially have extended producer responsibility (EPR) coming in for textiles, which is already there in other parts of Europe. Also, some of what might be coming down the line could influence what materials we’re allowed to use. This would be looking at the whole plastics debate, and how do we how do we navigate that with innovation?

Another area is looking at the effect of digitalisation. We know roughly what a smart digital factory might look like for the automotive industry. But what might it look like for the textile industry? If we were able to harness technology to create extremely flexible, self-adapting manufacturing capability in textiles beyond just basic automation and predictive analytics, what would it be able to do? And what might that look like?

There’s enormous opportunity to potentially increase competitiveness, reduce lead times and increase margins as well, which would be great for our industry. That’s in the longer term but there are some real opportunities, I think,

Through your work with Future Fashion Factory in particular where you have been working with a lot of UK textile manufacturers, what would you say as some of the key strengths of how UK businesses are working today?

The UK has a great heritage but I think the key strengths are probably quality, provenance and innovation.

The quality, some of that goes without saying, because these are companies that work with luxury brands so it’s incredibly important. It’s very evident that a lot of effort goes into to maintain that quality. But also, the level of innovation is essential in order to be able to remain competitive. The provenance is important, too. It means something to be made in the UK and to be designed in the UK, because this is a regulated environment. There’s a tremendous heritage as well, in many cases, and a lot of expertise and know how embodied in the design and manufacture of fabrics and finished products that come from the UK.

Although we haven’t been able to visit as many factories recently, for obvious reasons, these three things are what got me into textiles in the first place. Seeing the amazing things that go on in the UK industry is wonderful really.

There has been an incredible response to a project like Future Fashion Factory from industry but some companies may be reluctant to get involved or not know how to. What would you say to them?

Firstly, that there is no need to wait for a call for proposals or an investment call that we put out. I am supported by a wonderful team of colleagues and we are very happy to have an informal conversation with any company or any innovator about an idea and to take them through what might be possible, with no expectations and confidence. I think the best thing I can say is not to be afraid to reach out because we’re not going to judge the idea. The best thing is to just to have a chat about it. Another thing we’ve been doing as well as well as providing support, is signposting businesses to other organisations and people where appropriate, to help them do what they what they’d like to do. Sometimes it is more business support than innovation. It’s a case of starting the conversation and coming with an idea but don’t feel embarrassed. We’re definitely not Dragon’s Den.

BRITISH TEXTILE WEEK 22