FASHTECH INDUSTRY

A personal and global view of technology and the worlds of fashion, luxury, lifestyle and culture. Conversations and convergence. Bringing together those with a vested interest in fashion, technology, media and commerce, to talk ideas and explore new opportunities on the horizon in fashtech.

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A Look at the History of Fashtech Wearables

“The introduction of illuminated ballet girls has greatly added to the attractions of the grand stage. Girls with electric lights on the foreheads and batteries concealed in the recesses of their clothing.” 8 November 1884. 

More on the History of wearable fashion

History of fashion wearable tech - Infographic highlights

From the world of fashion 

Wearable Tech, pre-wearable tech

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4/06/16 Weekly Roundup

8 Tech trends to watch via HBR

Hedi Slimane: The Steve Jobs of Fashion via HBR

Buy now, build now, it’s the real revolution via Business of Fashion

Better infrastructure will build China Economy via Business of Fashion

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How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth

A new McKinsey Global Institute report finds that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality. The public, private, and social sectors will need to act to close gender gaps in work and society.

Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women—who account for half the world’s working-age population—do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer.

Six types of intervention are necessary to bridge the gender gap: financial incentives and support; technology and infrastructure; the creation of economic opportunity; capability building; advocacy and shaping attitudes; and laws, policies, and regulations. We identify some 75 potential interventions that could be evaluated and tailored to suit the social and economic context of each impact zone and country. Tackling gender inequality will require change within businesses as well as new coalitions. The private sector will need to play a more active role in concert with governments and nongovernmental organizations, and companies could benefit both directly and indirectly by taking action.

Why fashtech matters:

Venture funded opportunities - dominated specialized area for women professionals

VC’s - market opportunities for disruption in fashion with scale and magnitude

New Path to the C-Suite - Technology combined with marketing or editorial is still a rare skill set.

Cultivate talent - Opportunity to orient digital directors for C-suite or entrepreneurial path, hire more women engineers, scientists, creatives around the world

More successful women entrepreneurs means opportunities for representation within VC firms

Board seats - C-suite experienced, VC’s, Entrepreneurial women cultivated experience, fresh perspective to legacy systems

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Photographer Stephen Gill finds harmony in Hackney’s visual chaos via wallpaper

[glamour]

Perfect pink roses.

Via @paperlet on Instagram

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A view on the ground of the future of fashion with Alexa Chung

(via The Future of Fashion with Alexa Chung - Episode one)

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Understanding The Fourth Industrial Revolution

As the theme of Fashtech emerges, conversationally, I think it’s worth noting that it’s entirely distinct from fashiontech in that it is beyond just wearables.  It is about a more holistic view that runs in parallel as the world seems to have officially entered the digital era (digital revolution) and understanding how best to adapt to the transformative effects it is sure to have (and already has) on the fashion industry.

Fashtech is about thinking about it as an industry, as a whole, how ones business interconnects globally and as part of all of the possibilities (hopefully all the positive) of the fourth industrial revolution as eloquently written by Klaus Scwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.  Looking to the possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, access to knowledge x emerging technological breakthroughs in fields such as AI, robotics, the internet of things, 3D printing, nano technology, bio technology, materials science, energy storage, quantum computing and the vasts amounts of data it unleashes.

And the products and services that focus on efficiency and pleasure in our personal lives - ordering a cab, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film or playing a game.  It’s also a great opportunity for knowledge, learning more about the various cultures and impacts we have on our world, creating entirely new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupting existing industry value chains and systems with new patterns of consumer behaviour.

On the whole, there are four main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on business—on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and on organizational forms. Whether consumers or businesses, customers are increasingly at the epicenter of the economy, which is all about improving how customers are served. Physical products and services, moreover, can now be enhanced with digital capabilities that increase their value. New technologies make assets more durable and resilient, while data and analytics are transforming how they are maintained. A world of customer experiences, data-based services, and asset performance through analytics, meanwhile, requires new forms of collaboration, particularly given the speed at which innovation and disruption are taking place. And the emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organizational forms will have to be rethought.

On the surface, these seems like such obvious statements, but it certainly is good fodder to prompt a reevaluation early on and how the world will view the role of the fashion industry to date.  No doubt there will be disruptions, with an ever more self aware consumer, an incredibly empowered consumer, with a new world view and their individual role/impact in a much more inclusive, participatory, engaging and inter-connected global society that will champion self-actualization for those that can discern, recognize and act on opportunities.

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Weekly Roundup: Curated Perspectives / Transformation Economy

Market makers, thought shapers, networked consumer lifestyle influencers -   The emerging global themes and narratives

A look at Alibaba Jack Ma

A look at sovereign wealth funds, central bank reserves: Norway and an overview

Institutional Investors talk about shift to working directly with Hedge Funds

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A Look at the Fashion & Technology Industry through the Lens of Fashtech

One can not think about building a venture funded technology company without thinking about a significant solution it wants to bring to a problem, to a market, to a people.  That is the beauty of it, to disrupt and/or create anew at scale. 

One can not think about building a fashion business without the emotion or desire it creates.  The excitement, the creativity, the originality, mysteriousness, the interesting, the pure beauty, the colourful people who live life to the fullest. The shock of the new and the neverending quest for beauty that captivate the masses imagination and sell that fantasy, as a lifestyle to aspire to.

Technology has been unable to disrupt fashion for all of it’s slow adoption, a game most regarded for insiders, and so, for the most part, fashion has simply dismissed technology to run along and play somewhere else. 

And it has. 

Was fashion afterall too frivolous a market. Enter the digital world, a whole new world of other fantasies and realities of the world.

Organizing the worlds information, creating communication platforms with global reach for all. Forever connected.

There have been some insiders who brought fashion online, both premium and luxury.  Fashion followed by building ecommerce sites, the rare upstart fashion brands embraced digital communication early on and have gone on to build $1B valuations within the span of 10 years.

Perhaps, it should consider it a distribution channel and so it did - transnational with Duty Free Stores.  They built ecommerce stores of their own.

Ecommerce platforms were built for all, the sharing economy emerged, exclusivity became inclusive - cars, homes, private jets, designer clothing shared across social media channels that were blooming everywhere.

For the first time, fashion became socially awkward.  But fashion for its great skill, is clever.

They found their social media stride, their strut, their runway, And realized, technology should have a place - within their business function, in marketing, with an omnichannel strategy. Broadcasting cars, homes, private jets, designer clothing, that they owned, or one should dream to own and so with their bffs, of dream factor crafting, the traditional media system, friends in hollywood, the celebrities and for good measure, the new creature, the fashion blogger.

The business of fashion shined a new light, perhaps to better guide the adoption of technology, the real threats that may permeate, the need for more transparency to compete with next generation lifestyle brands with a purpose driven call for social good.

Through the lens of fashtech, the world of fashion looks at what lies beneath the surface of the inspirational image and still, appreciates the intrigue between the desire and repulsive that is the core of fashion of the era where it lives - modernized by the couturiers of the last century that brought designers great acclaim; brought under protection by the conglomerates and challenged to be better competitors by mass fashion.

Through the lens of fashtech, what once seemed cold, technological starts to feel more warm, more human with each collective experience, the secrets it now holds and keeps, along with the platforms it celebrates of humanity - the creativity and openness of experimenting to better the entire experience and those that take a risk to see it happen, the reimagining of a new world.

And for the first time, the fashion industry’s preliminary challenges throughout the fashion pipeline from seed to customer, it’s linear view, the real challenges of what stays hidden from view of this $1.3 trillion global industry and the second biggest polluter after oil - seems surmountable with technology by its side.

When you love both, and you love all, and the love is true, it becomes about having a real look at what’s going on, then simply about a commitment to make it better.  When you have the experiences of the passion for fashion, built things with tech, it’s about wanting to bring the two together in such a way that brings out the best side of each, of others.  It’s possible, we’re seeing a new era of that with next generation brands such as Warby Parker, Everlane and recently connected with CEO of Zady, Maiyet. The attitude of the next generational. It’s so refreshing.

It may seem strange, but it seems there is a pivotal moment that runs parallel to blackberry and apple, it was unimaginable to many that someone would want a computer they could carry in their pocket. That will be the beauty of the future ahead in fashtech, to see all that is possible.  For fashion to look within in a way that others did not dare to and search deep within, to start a new legacy as an opportunity to pass on to future generations, to utilize the inspirational image and their great ability of communicating emotion and desire to champion an emotionally durable design language throughout the entire fashion pipeline, value chain and seasonality, the ying to the yang of immediacy.

It’s also an interesting call for tech investors, there’s a passion for many women entrepreneurs to enter the fashtech space.  Within an Investors portfolio, they bet on the hope of a unicorn and they also know that there will be losses, so why not better the odds with the 63% of the less than 3% women venture backed companies that have gone on to be successes.  If every tech Investor had one female founded tech or fashtech company, that could be very exciting and interesting new dimension to an investment thesis.  Just one female founded company, then iterate the thesis.

[crfashionbook]

16 looks for the working woman

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Next Generation Affection & Romanticism from Family to New Industries

Technology and emotion are often perceived as juxtapositions, but I find that a dimension to me, is part romantic technologist none the less.  Last night I found that I was giving my daughter IRL gif hugs and kisses. That moment. Entirely amazing. In it’s authentic hilarity and new dimension of affection.   

I’m also a proud new aunt to my brother’s new born daughter, Audrey. As proud new aunt, naturally wanted to capture the feeling, and found that I chose to take a whole bunch of boomerang moments, felt it conveyed so much of the joy we were all feeling, also the sign of the times.  My brother’s second child and he was way more relaxed in his parenting approach and so my themes ranged from dance party with the aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews to rocket ship lifts when standing next to a posing cousin that captured genuine laughter to football carry’s next to a more careful grandparent and capturing the essence of what ties family’s together for generations. 

I’m also so aware of how beautiful and transformative it is to welcome a new born into this world.  For all. How in that moment, it will always nurture people’s souls with hope.  Captured that on one of my daughter’s apps, musica.ly (set to private) with a video of proud new mother and daughter looking into each other’s eyes, Enya as selected track. To just watching how beautiful it was to see my daughter filled with love holding her baby cousin in her arms. To making sure to go on a nice adventurous walk with my four year old nephew, sitting in the atrium that reminded him of Hawaii as he pondered with the weight of the world what it meant to have a new baby sibling and be the best big brother he could be.

These experiences in love are creating a new kind of excitement for me, of all that is possible - whether it’s with family or playing matchmaker with friends that explores interesting new combinations to project initiatives. That got me thinking about the fashion world and finance world and its long filled tales of romance, but I started thinking about the potential of Fashtech + Fintech, do the stars align in such a way to see a combination that emboldens women entrepreneurs in more enabled ways with the fintech efforts in data, analytics and innovative new thesis’ and niche’ to pursue the huge markets required for venture backed businesses. Cue romantic music orchestration..

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[karl-shakur]

by Karl-Shakur // Instagram 

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The Environmental Challenges Facing the Fashion Industry & Fresh Ideas for Fashtech

For many people, fashion begins and ends as “a fun and glorious accompaniment to the act of self expression”. These are the words of Lucy Collins, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Fashion Institute of Technology, speaking at Pioneer Mode 2015, a conference entitled “The Future of Fashion”. 

Collins’ words were a call to individuals not to take the world of fashion too seriously, but to approach it innovatively, without fear, with a sense of perspective and irreverence. Increasingly, however, the impact of the fashion industry is going beyond the aesthetic, the cultural, and the expressive. More and more, people are waking up to the environmental realities of the seemingly benign objects they wear. At a time when fashion is second only to oil as the most polluting industry, both the fashion industry and consumers need to face the stark reality.

If you’re looking for fresh and innovative ideas, in building a company that solves big problems to novel solutions as an independent designer, this is a great place to start thinking about a unique vision, innovative value chain practices and ways to reposition existing fashion brands and products.

For instance, ideas such as:

Bringing together a number of small to medium sized fashion companies to syndicate the purchasing of organic cotton, an enterprise that is usually hamstrung by the fact that, because of the instability inherent in smaller businesses, long-term contracts with producers are often impossible. The group spreads the risk, acting as guarantors to the contract.

More on the Pioneer Mode Conference and the Environmental Challenges Facing the Fashion Industry

Other Sustainability initiatives already in play  and a view of upstream downstream value chain and a move towards a circular economy is a step in the right direction

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The Economic Impact of the Fashion Industry & Distinct Solutions that can come from Fashtech

Fashion is an industry that is unmeasured in it’s most intangible contributions to society and key drivers.  Passion, creativity, emotion, real experiences in social and societal.  We measure this in a grouped way through revenues.

In fashtech, I think a holistic view of the total ecosystem, including a view of the economic impact of the fashion industry is a major distinction from the traditional legacy systems that adds a technological foundation that makes human life easier and more comfortable.  If you’re thinking about building a fashtech business, there’s much room for innovation at every level of the fashion pipeline, value chain, supply chain and new products and services. It’s an exciting time.

Here’s a view of the economic impact of the fashion industry.

Fashion is a $1.2 trillion global industry, with more than $250 billion spent annually on fashion in the United States, according to industry analysts. 1 Fashion and apparel industries employ 1.9 million people in the United States and have a positive impact on regional economies across the country.2 New York City and Los Angeles are the two largest fashion hubs in the United States, with over two-thirds of all fashion designers employed in these cities.3 But they are not the whole story, and cities such as San Francisco, Nashville, and Columbus are beginning to reap economic benefits, including high-paying jobs in fashion design.

Fashion is a structurally diverse industry, ranging from major international retailers to wholesalers to large design houses to one-person design shops. It employs people across occupations—including fashion designers, computer programmers, lawyers, accountants, copywriters, social media directors, and project managers. According to a report by the California Fashion Association, manufacturing is only a fraction of the modern apparel industry as “it is a highly sophisticated industry involving fashion and market research, brand licensing/intellectual property rights, design, materials engineering, product manufacturing, marketing and finally, distribution.

Read full report here

[anyahindmarch]

The Kaleidoscopic set for our Spring Summer 2016 London Fashion Week show 

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amazing, love AH blog

[anyahindmarch]

The Spring Summer 2015 Imperial clutch, brought to life by fashgif