BRIA is a London-based materials innovation agency aiming to transform the way fashion is designed and manufactured. Our motivation is to drastically reduce textile waste in the supply chain, reduce manufacturing lead times and improve profitability while simultaneously achieving sustainability (for people, processes and the planet).
BRIA communicates the future of sustainable fashion through not only digital design, but augmented reality Instagram filters. This allows users to experiment with BRIA’s digital materials and designs, mapping them to their physical features and overlaying them in the real world. BRIA puts sustainable stylistic choices into the social media feeds and general discourse of consumers, helping to normalize sustainable, digital fashion.
Brooke Roberts-Islam is an award-winning digital knitwear designer and consultant who recently co-founded the Brooke Roberts Innovation Agency (BRIA).
Following a previous career as a diagnostic radiographer within the NHS, Brooke used inspiration from scan images of the brain to create knitwear using the latest digital knitting technology and yarns. She subsequently gave a TED talk explaining how she combined radiography and knitwear design in her clothing range.
At BRIA, Brooke and her team develop physical and digital materials and design solutions for fashion brands and manufacturers, directly combining her knowledge of the latest developments in the "fashion-tech" sector with her pioneering cross-discipline approach to developing new materials.
In addition to her design and materials development work, Brooke is a "fashion-tech" and sustainability writer for Forbes.com, Chaos 69, Eco Age and Techstyler - a publishing platform and consultancy she founded - sharing opinions and interviews from the crossroads of these sectors.
Brooke is regularly invited to speak about the fusion of fashion and technology at events including the Wired Next Generation conference and the London Luxury Think Tank. She also regularly moderates panel discussions in London featuring fashion tech and sustainability pioneers.
The Brooke Roberts Innovation Agency (BRIA) presents the digital fashion installation ‘Augmented Fashion’ as a sustainable alternative to physical fashion at China Craft Week 2019.
In 'Augmented Fashion' BRIA reimagines the fashion design process itself by turning manual garment creation into a digitized process, to speed up design and manufacturing and drastically reduce textile waste and carbon emissions.