I love the matrix. The thought that the world is just a computer program were all living, to stop us from seeing the horrible reality. After all the awesome fight scenes and bullet time footage, it leaves us wondering. What is technology capable of! Are we stuck in a world of technology. Well, I’m not sure. But what I do know is, technology has improved so much we can use it to help us in our every day lives, from boiling a kettle to creating fashion designs and complex lay plans. It might not be as impressive as the matrix, but it is pretty good. Lectra is the leading company in integrated technology solutions, software and hardware. Lectra is very useful in the fashion industry with technology such as “The Digitiser” which is a board and mouse that can recreate an accurate pattern piece into a computer, using numbers and clicking at certain points. The software “Modaris” allows you to then adjust the pattern and add more pattern pieces and add grain lines and seam allowance. Once the pattern is completed you can send it through “Diamino”, which will lay out your pattern pieces. Working out the most efficient way to lay it all out, saving the most amount of fabric. It can then be sent to a large printer to print the pattern pieces out on paper and cut them out for you. You can also use software such as kaledo to create working sketches and fashion designs, adding scans of fabric and colour to your designs to create a nice clean finish. (If you have read previous posts, you will know, I love creating digital fashion designs, and kaledo is something new to me, but after practise, I think its brilliant.)

The software and hardware are all compatible with one another making it easy to pass a single piece of work between them all, easily and quickly. This is important if you are a big business, to safe time, money and to keep the work flowing, without problems of needing extra software. After using the software myself, I see that there is a lot of potential. I know it will work well in industry, because its easy to use and most defiantly saves space, you can store all your pattern pieces on a computer rather than in cupboard and you don’t need twenty people cutting out pattern pieces when you can get one person to print off twenty and let the machine print and cut them all out for you. Although this does raise one question. Are we allowing too much technology to take over. Yes, this technology is brilliant for creating mass-produced clothing, a robot can draw a pattern piece more accurately and faster than a human pattern cutter and even cut it out a lot faster. A robot you don’t need to pay wages or give breaks, you only need one person to look after a few robots and only pay a few repairs now and again. While a human, well, insurance, health and safety, sick days, Humans are costly. So, What happens when pattern cutters are no longer needed because a computer can do it all. They become a lost skill, much like the high street full of shops, bakers, green grocers, butchers. Being lost to something bigger than them, the digital world. Don’t get me wrong though, I love technology, it gives us better health care, easier to communicate to people around the world, entertainment. but it makes you wonder. Generations on from us, they will talk about the mythical highstreets that sell physical items, people knew how to make things. There’ll talk about the “Real world” compared to their simulated world. We are entering the Matrix!

Enter The Matrix