In many Sci Fi books, the heroes get to use advanced space suits which act more like autonomous space ships. They take verbal instructions on where the user wants to go and takes him or her there, doing all the navigation and thrust control, adapting freely to each circumstance that they encounter and transporting the wearer over vast distances. They are even capable of making safe atmospheric entry and touch down.
We may not be there yet, but we are seeing the emergence of a number of technologies which start to make this seem like a plausible future. Firstly, there are a wide range of fabrics which can be woven into electronic circuits and change colour as the result of external stimuli, such as heat, laser light or electrical charge. Secondly there is an increasing range of devices built for embedding into material for reading temperature, blood pressure, pulse rates and so on. Thirdly, 3D printing is being augmented by 4D printing, which essentially enables "shape memory" characteristics to be built into whatever is printed. 3D printing already has evolved beyond wax model and plastic component printing, to cover chemical printing and metal printing. So it is already conceivable that clothes will be printed and no longer sewn.
This means that it is quite likely that within 20 years, the fashion industry may have changed beyond all recognition. People will no longer have wardrobes stuffed full of clothes. Instead they will have a few suits of clothes optimised for categories of use, e.g. work, casual wear, party gear, outdoor activities. These will be blanks onto which patterns will be electronically downloaded to give the style, fit, colour scheme or pattern that the user wants. So fashion will be sold as electronic designs rather than garments, making for a more ecologically sound approach to clothing. It may be that the patterns will be dynamic so that they respond to other stimuli. So for instance you could have party clothing which responds to the beat of the music or the heat of your body. Your clothing could respond to changing weight so that it expands and contracts in size along with your weight. Uniforms for the armed forces could be tailored to provide adaptive camouflage and so on. There might even be other functional adaptions such as the ability for police uniforms to adapt so that they bulk up and become protective against projectiles in a riot situation. Alternatively, the weave of the cloth could adapt to external conditions so that your clothes are naturally aspirated and cooling when it is hot and extra insulating to retain heat when it is cold.
This really means that "The Emperor" could walk about in almost invisible clothes which change and adapt to become formal attire when he goes out in public.
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