Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. On Wednesday, leaders in business, art, fashion, and technology gathered on the 102nd floor of New York's One World Trade Center for a TIME100 Impact Dinner. The event orbited around a panel, moderated by TIME's editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, that discussed how AI could shape the future of fashion--particularly from a customer's perspective. The panelists were David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer for Ralph Lauren, which sponsored the event; Shelley Bransten, corporate vice president, worldwide industry solutions, at Microsoft, which also sponsored the event; and artist and researcher Sougwen Chung, who founded Scilicet, a studio exploring human and non-human collaboration.

It sounds odd, but some folks are much better at Googling than others. They find the link first, whether it's tickets for a show, a niche answer to a trivia question or a pair of shoes you've lusted for since you saw them on TV. They've been raised by search engines, but they aren't intimidated by the vastness of an open-ended search. And in the era of search engine optimization, there's less chance involved once you type in a high volume keyword: there's a company out there tailoring its content to your chosen search, and a million others chasing its tail. When you search "boots for men," for example, you'll probably run into Gear Patrol's boots buying guide.

The urgency to solve for virtual fit, once relegated online, has extended to stores, where the pandemic has made trying on clothing more complicated. Reopened stores are mostly contactless, meaning that fitting rooms are closed, restricted or just unappealing; 65 per cent of women feel unsafe trying on apparel in dressing rooms, according to First Insight. Thus, shoppers are left to guess size and fit -- and more inclined to adopt the buy-then-try behaviours that mimic e-commerce. The phenomenon has compromised a key value proposition for stores; fit is the top reason for online returns, which for apparel can be 40 per cent. "People are using their bedrooms as fitting rooms," says Haniff Brown, founder and CEO of fit-tech startup Fit:Match.

We're officially a month into 2020 and the new decade is well underway. So much so, it is worth reflecting back as it jolted our eyes open and set the stage for what's to come. To sum it up in a word, data. Data, data everywhere – how to get it, how to use it, how to see it. Everywhere you looked there were analytics dashboards.

Advances in mixed-reality technologies and machine learning, coupled with the development of reactive and adaptable materials, are changing the way we think about what is real and what is digital. "Programmable reality", a term recently coined by forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, refers to the growing ability for material objects to assume digital attributes. Its advancement is set to transform product and retail development over the next five to 10 years. "Tomorrow's consumer will expect the world around them to become as personalised and responsive as online experiences have been," says Future Laboratory senior foresight writer Rhiannon McGregor. This has significant implications on the ways brands create and speak about their products.