Investment in fashion-related technology increased by 66% during the pandemic, according to research by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey. The report found that the value of the top 50 investments in fashion-related technology across the past year, either by fashion retailers or businesses that sell products and services to fashion-related companies, has increased by 66% to $16.2bn since 2019, indicating an increase of capital put into technology in the fashion sector. According to The Business of Fashion and McKinsey, around 55% of these investments went towards ecommerce technology, while the rest was mostly put into payments technology, buy-now-pay-later tech and social commerce. Investment in resale technology, supply chain and logistics management, non-fungible tokens, and virtual reality companies closely followed. Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion, said: "The pandemic cemented technology's critical role in the fashion industry, particularly in terms of ecommerce adoption. But now the industry must lean even further into new technologies by experimenting in the metaverse, embedding fully digitised workflows across their organisations and investing in traceability tools to help them reach sustainability targets. Those who choose to wait on the sidelines risk being left behind."

On the surface, fashion's global impact shows no sign of waning. But look closely and you'll discover an industry struggling to evolve with the times. In December, The State of Fashion report by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey revealed that 67 percent of fashion executives believe conditions in the industry had worsened in the previous year. But, nearly a year later, are the seams still unravelling? The Future Laboratory has identified four major anxieties casting long shadows over the industry.

Everybody wants to look beautiful. We all like to be well dressed and keep up with fashion trends, but most times this is not possible. We are constrained by time, money and the skill to put together trendy outfits. The problem gets compounded when we go shopping online. Every store has 1000's of items in each category.

Experts predict a revolution in the next 10 years with robot sales assistants, robot manufacturing, chatbots and AI working their way into every area of the fashion sector. Not so many years ago, the height of retail tech was a sales assistant with an iPad. But technology moves fast and yesterday's cutting edge innovation has become today's same old, same old. So what tech is shaking up the business world today and how might it affect the fashion sector? Think robots, drones, machine learning/artificial intelligence, virtual reality and chatbots. All of these make iPads in-store feel almost Stone Age.

Everybody wants to look beautiful. We all like to be well dressed and keep up with fashion trends, but most times this is not possible. We are constrained by time, money and the skill to put together trendy outfits. The problem gets compounded when we go shopping online. Every store has 1000's of items in each category.