Fashion Week Geeks Out with Couture 3D Prints, Stitched-In Chips + More

Technology and fashion.  Those two words may be the least likely combination you’ll ever come across, but as technology invades every facet of our lives, it’s not so absurd.  Given the growing interest retail has shown in technology applications with the help of Big Data analytics, it was only a matter of time before new tech invaded the holy grail of fashion.

Fashion Week is a bi-anual, week-long event held months in advance of the season so designers can show off their upcoming collections.  The participating fashion capitals of the world are Paris, Milan, New York and London, with Madrid gaining popularity.

Just as Fashion Week offers a glimpse of the colors, patterns and cuts that will be popular through 2013, the global event also hints at the emerging services fashion will employ with the right technology in order to market and appeal to buyers.  So how has technology injected itself in today’s fashion?

Personalized fashion chips
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Burberry launched a new initiative at London Fashion Week by embedding digital chips that deliver bespoke information regarding the new season’s coats and bags.  The idea is to entice consumers to pre-order items as they hit the runway.

The name of the game is personalization.  Consumers can pre-order coats and bags and have bespoke metal nameplates stitched into the lining of the item they want.
With the aid of a smartphone, the chip displays the story of the coat or bag, from its beginnings in a sketchpad to the runway.  The same technology can be found in its flagship digital store in Regent Street, London.  The chips will prompt the information to appear in its large-scale mirrors that turn into screens.

Burberry will reveal more information about the technology in about 9 weeks.

Fashionable hackathon
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In New York, Decoded Fashion, a company that bridges the gap between technology and fashion, launched a hackathon that brought together hundreds of graphic designers and software developers.  The result was the creation of 78 different fashion apps.

SWATCHit, the “mobile-web communication platform that manages coordination between designers and artisans in emerging market textile industries,” took home the $10,000 grand prize.  Aside from the cash prize, Ramzi Abdoch’s team also took home a $2,900 Donna Karen New York (DKNY) shopping spree, a strategy lunch with the Refinery 29 founders at their headquarters, a private Macallan tasting, and a commitment from the Council of Fashion Designers of America to actually build the app.