3 fashion techs weaving their way into retail

Recently, Fieldworks PR & Insights team headed to Strategy Eye’s Future of Fashion Technology event in London’s Whitechapel.

From futuristic textiles to tinder-style apparel accumulator apps and ‘universal cart’ concepts, there was plenty to be impressed by. I’ve chosen my top three tech picks from the evening:

Tech-styles – next gen materials

Wearable tech just got a whole lot more interesting, thanks to some eye-opening inspiration from Central St Martins, the iconic London college, which counts fashion-faves Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs and Stella McCarthy among its alumni.

So, what’s next? According to Material Futures lecturer, Amy Congdon, we can expect a shift in our relationship with wearables; instead of being limited to what we can build into garments, digital tech, data and organic science will be woven into the very fabric of fashion.

Trainers that organically adapt in real-time to the temperature of your skin cells while you exercise to keep you cool and garments that can administer prescribed medicines direct to the site of an injury were just some of the concepts currently being piloted by Central St Martins’ students.  Beam me up, Scotty!

Shopping Lysts

Next up is Lyst, which aims to ‘end the endless search’ for online customers by blending data and retail through its fashion bookmarking and recommendation service.

By using its own algorithm, Lyst’s platform curates personalised shopping suggestions for each individual customer based on their favourite designers and stores. Founded on data, it pools previous purchase stats and behaviours, delivering shoppers their very own news feed of products, so they can see more of what they like.

Think of it as having your very own digital department store, which has been built just for you and only features your favourite brands, and comes complete with a pocket-sized personal shopper.

And it gets better: if you ‘click-out’ on any of the products you can chose to buy direct from a brand or use Lyst’s own universal check out to order, pay and ship fashion buys, meaning you can shop all of your favourite brands in one place – winner.

Snapping up a style buy

Then came my personal favourite of the evening: Snap Fashion, a digital shopping search engine app, which aims ‘to be to the camera what the keyboard is to Google’, according to founder andCEO, Jenny Griffiths.

A simple snap on anything on your iPhone – whether it’s an outfit sported by your style icon in your favourite mag or that ‘must have’ item you spied on Pinterest – the app then matches your picture, finding similar products online, based on the colour pantone, texture and shape.

Reconnecting customers to their fashion inspiration means ‘sold out’s will no longer stand in the way of shoppers’ style buys –  could this be fashion technology’s answer to the ‘Kate Effect’?!

 

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