This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Influencers' "#sheinhaul" videos advertised the company's trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views. At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies.

It's mid-July, and the yacht on the Hudson is called Praying for Overtime -- an apt name for the boat hosting the Laws of Motion event, where founder Carly Bigi and her crew's passion for beautiful, perfect-fitting clothing bubbles up alongside the Aperol spritzes at the bar. Bigi herself wears a vibrant pink romper that manages to strike the balance between totally chic and still professional, a throughline for the collection, and the pieces on deck: a rack of white with subtle feathers ringing sleeves and hems. Laws of Motion's styles are modern takes on timeless silhouettes, but that's where any resemblance to other brands begins and ends. That's because Laws of Motion, which counts Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss among its investors, relies on data to help customers find the ideal fit and reduce the impact of fast fashion (there's an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste each year, globally). Related: This Fashion Founder's Company Will Take Back Any Piece of Clothing for Any Reason.

In today's world of fast fashion, retailers sell only a fraction of their inventory, and consumers keep their clothes for about half as long as they did 15 years ago. As a result, the clothing industry has become associated with swelling greenhouse gas emissions and wasteful practices. The startup Armoire is addressing these issues with a clothing rental service designed to increase the utilization of clothes and save customers time. The service is based on machine-learning algorithms that use feedback from users to make better predictions about what they'll wear. Customers pay a flat monthly price to get access to a range of high-end styles.

In the first application for Hikrobot in the UK, global fashion brand, Superdry, is leveraging the flexibility of intelligent mini-robot carriers to transform order picking and put-away at its UK hub – just part of a phased roll-out of goods-to-person robotics that will boost productivity across its international network of multi-channel fulfilment centres. Superdry is an iconic, global fashion brand operating through 768 store locations in 65 countries. Since its foundation in Cheltenham in 1985, the business has experienced phenomenal growth and in 2019 reported revenue of £871 million – a success story built on a reputation for providing distinctive, high-quality products that fuse vintage Americana and Japanese inspired graphics with a British style. As an omni-channel retailer competing in the fast-moving fashion sector, maintaining high product availability, efficient fulfilment and the rapid processing of returns is essential for ensuring the best possible customer experience across multiple channels – retail, wholesale and ecommerce. Critically, all of these competitive differentiators depend upon the fast, accurate and efficient picking of products from across Superdry's extensive range of over 60,000 SKUs, held at the company's three regional distribution centres in the UK, Europe and USA.

Circular fashion is part of the circular economy, an economic system that at its core is embedded with an ideology of reuse, recycle and refurbish in order to eliminate waste, stop items from going into landfills, and extend the lifecycle of products by keeping them in use and in circulation. The fashion industry is notorious for its wasteful and environmentally damaging practices accounting for over 10% of global carbon emissions a percentage which is slated to increase to 24% of the global carbon budget by the year 2050 at current demand. Much of this is due to the synthetic fibers and fabrics primarily used in fast fashion, 70 million barrels of oil are used to produce polyester every year and wasteful practices exacerbate the impact, it turns out that the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second! Fresh on the heels of a $175 million raise, thredUP is poised to capitalize on the growing $24 billion second-hand market through its use of artificial intelligence to bring efficiencies and scale to every area of its operations, while fueling the circular fashion trend among traditional retail brands with the launch of its "resale as a service" offering. The company's mission is to inspire a new generation of shoppers to think second hand first, keeping clothing out of landfills so that people can look great without being part of the problem.

Silicon Valley is abuzz with Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) and blockchain vendors seeking the Holy Grail of Retail: mass consumer markets where their technology can help fashion designers and retailers survive the "retail apocalypse." At the recent San Francisco Tech Fashion Week, retail experts provided invaluable insights that could save millions of designers, major retailers and small shops from bankruptcy. Here are key insights from three panels. In 2014, Macy's learned that "omnichannel marketing is the way to go." Instead of targeting customers with one channel, whether online or in-store, retailers must pursue multiple channels. For example, small retailers can also sell on Amazon to leverage its free shipping, which is a major competitive advantage.