Ep 11 Design: Innovative fashion, technology and shoes that might change everything

Trendspotting can be a powerful tool to help you find breakthrough ideas. In this episode, we explore the intersection of fashion, technology, and a trend that could disrupt the entire fashion industry.

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Transcript

Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody? Welcome to the 11th episode of The Crazy One podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. And so working on the show, for me has been a bit like, well, I guess it's like working on anything else I do. It's a process, you try and figure out how to make it better. You try to keep refining it, you try to keep thinking about it. And so I think that's true in a lot of different ways. I think it's true and how I put the show together. It's true in the subjects that I talked about. And a couple different times I've gone out to social media and ask people, what are the things you want me to talk about? What are the things that you're interested in? And one of the number one topics every time has been to talk about trends or to talk about emerging technologies. So today's gonna be the first one of those shows. But before we jump into that, I think it is important to define or at least let you know how do I define a trend or how do I define innovation? Right? Because I think those are such incredibly overused such incredibly abused words these days. Honestly, I think whenever you do what I do, whenever you're a creative director, some part of your job is trend spotting, and trying to figure out what's going to be the next thing, the most interesting thing, the thing where you need to move your team, you need to move your work your brand or your company towards. And as a result, I keep my eye on a lot of different industries, not just the one I work in, I think that probably came out of starting in an ad agency where you never knew what client was going to come in the door. Let's define trend or let's define innovation. Whenever you see a company or you see someone talk about innovation, one of the things I see a lot is what I see them talk about something that they're already doing, that they're just trying to put a new face on. They're just trying to make a mild improvement to it And to me, that's not Innovation, that's short term, it's a mild improvement, that that's not a trend or that's not innovation. The other thing that you see a lot, especially in the digital space, you see brands, you see people coming out with these big, grand, long term visions. This is the what are we going to be doing in five years, 10 years, 20 years. And sometimes it's even just when a new piece of technology comes out, they will release a screenshot and a press release about what they might do someday. Well, for me, those aren't trends. And that's not innovation, either, that that might as well be science fiction, as far as I'm concerned, because it's so far away. That the only thing that we know is by the time whatever that date was that they picked out for the future comes around. That's not going to be the way things are if it was we would have flying cars and be living on the moon and a whole bunch of other stuff. I think there's a pretty solid track record of why those super long term visions aren't really the place where we need to be looking. Because for me what I Whenever I look for trends is I look somewhere in the middle, I look for those things that look to change something that look to do something differently. But there's something that can actually be done. There's something that can actually be created and launched. Because I think that's where real innovation is. That's where I try to focus on innovation is to get something that is new and different, but it's something that actually gets out the door. Because doing the long term vision where you're free of constraints, you don't have to build it. That's too easy, because you can make up whatever you want and say that's what it's gonna be and there's nobody gonna hold you to it. And if it's too close and too near term, and it's not really a change, well then it's just marketing. I tend to think about it. And this may sound a little weird. I think about it like the movie Iron Man. If you think about the the Marvel movie that came out with Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man did something really interesting. If you go back and if you think about it, because the technology that they showed in that movie and in all the movies, actually Didn't feel quite as much like science fiction, as a lot of the other movies did. If you think about what they did think about Jarvis. Jarvis was the computer that Robert Downey Jr. could talk to, that ran the suit that ran his home. That Jarvis was one of those things that seemed futuristic, that it could have a conversation. It was much more eloquent. But at the same time, you could believe it. Because you had Siri on your phone, or maybe you had Alexa on your countertop, that it was something that was believable and possible. And I think that that's one of the things that all of those movies did really well was that everything that was in there seemed plausible, that it might not be realistic right now. But you could see how we could get there. You could see how Siri could turn into something as sophisticated as what Jarvis was. And I think that that balance, right that Iron Man's sort of approach. I think that's what it is that I really look for. Because when you can find that's when that magic really happens. Because the trick to all this is that in some ways, you're guessing. You're looking at a bunch of stuff. And you're saying, look, I think this is interesting, I think it has possibility. But for anything to become successful, it has to find scale. It has to find mass adoption. And that's the challenge. Because these days, we have an entire generation, we have an entire part of the country in Silicon Valley, that are just built on nothing but people who want to just go get to work, fixing problems coming up with apps and new experiences. And so ideas are not in short supply, finding the ideas that can find scale that can have impact, so you aren't always betting on the wrong horse. That's the challenge. And so, in this episode, we're going to talk about trends. We're going to talk about innovation. And what we're going to do for this one is I want to take a look at the intersection between five And technology. And because I think that there is something here that is incredibly interesting. And so what we're going to do is we're going to start by just let's take a look at the just the current state of these two industries and where they intersect. What is fashion doing with technology? What is technology doing with fashion? Just we're a bit of a state of the union. And then there's one trend. And one product in particular, that I think has the potential and has that Jarvis sort of positioning that I think honestly could upend the entire industry and completely disrupted in a way that I'm not even sure the fashion houses are really thinking about. So that's what we're going to do today. And that's what we're going to do on this episode. But first, let's get to the obvious question. What the hell do I know about fashion? I think that there aren't many people who are in the design industry or who are definitely in the digital industry who are known as being experts on fashion. And fashion is an interesting thing because I've always been fascinated with it, I've always found a great amount of inspiration from it. But fashion and I've had a bit of a, I guess we'll call it a troubled or a frustrating relationship for a couple of different reasons. The first of which is that I am six foot four. And whenever you are six foot four, you are an edge case, you were size 14 shoes, when most high end fashion houses stop at a 12 you are probably at least six to eight inches taller than any piece of clothing that they will ever make. And by some reason that I will never understand they think that the taller you are, the more you seem to love Hawaiian print, which I personally have always felt was really for people who either lived in the tropics or for people who just quite frankly wanted to hide stains. So if you're tall, there's not a great amount of fashion. It's available to you insanely frustrating, and what is well designed, what is well done. Well, it's easy. They're so expensive because it's basically custom, that it's just incredibly cost prohibitive, or it is created with such rarity. There's one particular brand of shoes that I love. There are on average two pairs in the entire world that are made in the size that I wear. So this becomes something of a Where's Waldo scramble Amazing Race, to sprint to find these whenever they come out. And you can decide if that's something you want to engage in or not. But in either case, it's more than a little bit frustrating. So fashion and I just on the physical level, haven't always really gotten along. The other thing for me that has always been frustrating about fashion, and I will own how hypocritical This may sound. But being a man who is interested in fashion is insanely frustrating. Because most of the time I'll walk into a high end fashion boutique. Or a store, a big retailer like Neiman Marcus or something, which is my personal one that just drives me the most insane. You walk in there? And I have a question. There's something I'm looking for either for myself or my wife, and the salespeople no matter what gender, creed, color, anything else, look at you. And they make the assumption that since you're a man, you can't possibly know anything about fashion, that for some reason, your assembly they're on an errand for your wife, to retrieve whatever it is that she's wanted, giving some name that you need to go get. And there's nothing else that you could possibly understand about any of this. And I'll get on a soapbox here for a second. Because as somebody who loves fashion for somebody who knows a lot about fashion for somebody who quite honestly, I can almost guarantee you knows more about the current collections that are in those stores than the salespeople who are they're being dismissed like that is more than a little inferior. And with my personality just being dismissed in general, is more than a little infuriating. So it makes it just very hard to engage whenever the people who are the salespeople and the ambassadors for these companies don't take you seriously. So that's how I've had this interesting relationship with fashion. But enough about the complaining. Let's talk about what do I actually know. So I've always been fascinated with fashion. I think that it's just it has the ability to shape culture, and to shape perspective and to shape opinion on design. Unlike many other industries that I've ever seen. This interest was taken to a whole nother level whenever I met my wife. My wife is someone who has worked for Chanel. She runs her own fashion project called the chic library, which is a social media and a blog that looks at the latest in emerging fashion and designers. We probably have one of the largest and most robust collections of vintage fashion books. I've known about probably anywhere in the world, that whenever we travel, we regularly meet with emerging designers to see what's coming up to see what are the interesting things that are going on. And because of this, I know a lot more about fashion than I think the average person would honestly ever suspect. Because I used to study it. I used to have to I would go to Fashion Week regularly. Whenever I worked on w hotels, we were one of the main sponsors of Fashion Week. So I would go to the tents every year, we would have parties, one of my biggest creative inspirations. Honestly, what maybe my biggest creative inspiration remains Alexander McQueen, who I think was truly and purely an absolute genius, that if you did not get to see savage beauty, which was the museum show that toured around the world, find a video or find a book and look at McQueen's work, because Never have I seen someone who could change their perspective and remains so insanely innovative year after year after year, producing such mind bending new directions and design and fashion that were so holistically different every year. And you look at that, and you just feel so dwarfed by the output of somebody like that, that I've actually gone and I've had a private tour of East St. Lawrence studio in Paris. At the Sandler oil foundation. This was the original couture house, where he created some of the most iconic fashion in the world. I've seen his sketches I've looked at the Muslims, I've seen the original dresses that were there whenever I got to stand in there, which was an unbelievable thing. And the other thing that I'll say, which I'm sure sets me apart, is that I can spot a fake Louis Vuitton bag faster than pretty much any gay or straight man that I've ever met. I've gone to different vintage houses. I've been asked to actually authenticate bags. So I know a lot about this industry. A lot more than many people might think, why do we start here? Why don't we start with fashion and technology? Why do I want to start with this being the first trend? Well, I think for a couple of reasons, because whenever you look at industries that are ripe for disruption, a couple things need to be in play. I think one is that you need to have a structure, a way of doing things that hasn't changed in a really long time. And whenever you look at fashion, this is an industry where the concept of clothing and quite honestly the way that it's sold, hasn't changed much in honestly over 100 years. That Yes, you have companies like Rent the Runway, there are other ones that maybe change how you can access it. But in terms of what the clothing really is, in terms of the way you buy it, there's not a whole lot new that's going on out there. The other thing that you need whenever you need disruption is you need money. That obviously makes the world go round. So every year fashion is around a one $2.7 trillion industry. And that is staggering to think of how much we're spending on fashion, especially whenever you think about the fact that the amount of literal textiles that are produced for the fashion that we consume has grown by about 50% over the last eight to 10 years, a lot of that being driven by this new trend in fast fashion, almost disposable fashion. This is the hmms of the world that will produce a huge volume of clothes incredibly cheaply that are almost disposable. You wear them a few times you get rid of them. And it's at a cost point that lets that be completely possible. But I think that the other thing is that whenever you you look at just fashion as an industry, there is just such a devastating lack of understanding for how to use technology and how to not only create their clothes but to build their brands. Some of the most backwards and laggard brands that have been so insanely frustrating to me have been fashion houses. I've never understood why are these places that can be such beacons of style such beacons of design, but can be so clueless whenever it comes to the technology that is equally as big as shaping culture and design. And those are the things to me that honestly have never made sense. And especially at a time when you've started to watch technology companies bleed into the fashion world. If you think about it, the first and probably biggest invasion into that space came with something so simple. It came with the white earbuds of an iPod that if you think back the even the commercials even the print ads that Apple did whenever they launched the iPod or when they launched the iPhone, where people in a black silhouette against a brightly colored background, with just those pure white earbuds and what they did with those was a created a fashion statement. Whenever you see somebody with those white earbuds you know what that means, you know they have an iPhone, you know who it is they stand for, you know something about them, just those two little thin pieces of white wire stand for something. And from there, we've seen this grow. If you live in any sort of an urban setting whenever I live in New York City, every day walking through the subway, pieces of technology or a fashion statement, the headphones that people wear, the phone that they carry, the case that it's in, all of these things that now either are or carry or encompass technology are fashion, and they're looked at as fashion statements. And so you continue to see this happening more and more as technology because of this vacuum is starting to invade this space. And the fashion houses quite honestly I think aren't really sure how to react. And this is where I see such missed opportunities. Because the way that they market their brands and they integrated into their clothes is just broken. And I do think as we talked a minute ago about that fast fashion trend is not helping this fact, because of the fact that since speed has now become such an important thing, since it's something that they focus on so much, well, the days of that made to order tailored bespoke, more considered collection. Well, those are dying. And I think with it are the research and innovation that went with it. Whenever I went to UCL studio and I talked to that couture house, there are less than 260 customers left in the world for their couture fashion, for they're made by hand made to order fashion, because the rest of their customers have gone to ready to wear the thing that I can walk in and I can buy off the rack. Well, this journey towards speed, it's hurting innovation and it's hurting progress. And I think this is why I see this industry so ready to be disrupted. And I think that there's some really interesting technologies that may start to do that. So let's talk about the current state of fashion and technology and where some of those trends are. I think the easiest and most accessible place to start is going to be with wearable technology. Because the reality is, is that this meeting between technology and fashion is been this clumsy teenage dance between these companies trying to figure out how to get it right. And so the first few fumbling and funding attempts have been less than fantastic. And so we've seen a few of these sorts of things start to happen. One of the most visible was probably the partnership that emerged between the Irma's fashion house from France, and Apple with the Apple Watch. But here as we look at this, all that we see is we see the Apple Watch, really in the exact same way that it exists, the only addition being one or two additional watch faces and a leather brand made by Irma's each company basically sticking to their corner and seeing an easy place to come out. And find the intersection where they can meet, really in the exact same model that we've had with iPhone cases, whenever you go to any high end house, they would make an iPhone case, the six took them a little bit longer to figure out. But this is where the intersection was very, very light, very, not much real kind of media integration, they're going back a little bit further, we saw Diane Von Furstenberg jump into the ring with encouragement of Sergey Brin and the people over at Google to try to come on board with Google Glass. Glass was, for many reasons, pretty much an abject failure. Google never really took into account the sociological problems that were going to come along whenever you stuck a camera in the middle of someone's face, and let them walk around in public with a small display that other people were aware of, but they couldn't see. But here again, all that Ron Furstenberg did was come up with a series of sunglasses and glasses frames that could then again be attached on to Google Glass. So Really just the the new version of an iPhone case or an Apple Watch strap. And these are really just co branding opportunities, they don't really add much value outside of just the halo of the the merger between the two companies, the fashion houses, thinking they're gonna look a bit more hip or a bit more modern. By partnering with the likes of Apple or Google and the technology companies thinking they're going to look a little bit more. Kondo fashion conscious design conscious because of the partnership with the fashion houses. But in those ways, neither one is really kind of helping the other and we just have this superficial sort of thing. Well, the next evolution, past wearables that we've started to see is smart clothing. And this is really probably going to be the successor to these sort of wrist based fitness trackers because that's what most of these are. Two years ago, I think Ralph Lauren had debuted where they're calling a smart shirt at the US Open, that could track things like heart rate and had an accelerometer and a few others. Other basic fitness tracker things. Adidas followed suit recently was something they called tech fit elite that has heart rate sensors and accelerometers, they went a little bit of a different direction with that. And they've been going after Major League Soccer teams in the MLS and in different parts of Europe to be able to do these sort of fitness trackers, because again, in a lot of cases with these big, Hallmark sort of teams, making sure they're performing at their best is something they're more than willing to invest in. But we haven't seen much more out of that we've seen a few other again of these simple integrations, whether it's the winter gloves that have mesh in the fingers, so you don't have to take them off to use your iPhone. Burton, who had put music controls into the arms of their jackets, but again, this is just really kind of taking the same thing and trying to find a slightly different form factor for it. A few of the areas that start to get a bit more interesting probably come in the manufacturing side. So if you want a really good look at this and just in general every The Metropolitan Museum here in New York, partners with the costume Institute, to put on a show that has a different theme every year. So years ago, that was the Alexander McQueen savage beauty show that I talked about. After that it was China. And this year brings a show called Magnus Ex Machina, which is the fashion in the age of technology. That, interestingly enough, was sponsored by Apple. And this show is running until September 5. So if you are listening to this show, whenever it came out, or shortly thereafter in New York, I would highly encourage you to go to the show, I'd highly encourage you to go to this Met Gala every year just because I think it constantly is a really interesting look at the state of fashion for a lot of different reasons. But this show at the Met walks through the where are we at and this sort of intersection point between technology and fashion. Most of it does, however, focus on manufacturing, that there are just different techniques that we can use. One of the ones that is obviously highlighted a lot it's one of the ones that had a big flare up in interest, which has cooled off a bit of late is 3d printing. One of the most interesting artists whenever you go is a designer named Iris van herpen, who has these very elaborate, I don't know what they almost look like football shoulder pads if they were done by like hr gieger, who designed the creature for alien. They're these very almost organic but very big, very fascinating 3d printed dresses. And we're starting to see more and more of this idea of 3d printing coming into fashion in the couture space with it is tends to be a bit more of these kind of one off custom. They tend to either look very organic or molecular or these kind of like exoskeleton sort of looking things. You do see it in other places where probably about a year and a half ago, the design team at Nike had showed me where it was the first fully printed, fully 3d printed shoe that they were going to try to bring in to the NFL. And I think that this is where you can See the endgame where they want to get to, which is the Star Trek replicator the whatever I need, I'm going to print at home, sort of a model. And so I think it's as as a trend, I think we're gonna have to wait and see if 3d printing can figure itself out because it is just encumbered by a few different things. I think one is price point. And the fact that the printers and especially printers of any quality just simply are not cheap. That it's something where in often cases they are difficult to use as somebody who has had and worked with maker bots and other technologies. They clog a lot, the printing takes a long time, half the time you get halfway through the print and something goes wrong. And it's just they can be incredibly frustrating to work with the commercial versions of these that can even go up to print metal and furniture and chocolate and human ears and all sorts of other crazy things I think hold much more promise. But the the home version I think we still are a bit of a ways away from. The other thing that you see a lot at this show at the Met is you see a lot of laser cutting This is basically the idea of trying to do things that are a bit more organic, trying to do things that honestly are just a bit more interesting, a bit more intricate, a bit more involved patterning than anything that you'd be able to do honestly, commercially or by hand. So this is a case where the, the merger of those two is just being able to create some sort of interesting new evolutions in design. But again, not anything that I think was really earth shattering. But out of that, that that quest for organic in fashion has led to an entirely new and pretty interesting development, which is one of the things is that if you ever actually take the time to look at the toll that fast fashion takes on the earth, you would find that it's fairly horrifying, because the way that these fabrics are dyed and the conditions that they're created in, use these pretty terrible chemicals that ruin water supplies, they ruin a lot of stuff. And so as a response to that, there are a few designs to studios that are actually trying to eliminate that process and to try to do something differently by actually growing fabric. And I've talked to one of these designers and I think that the way that they actually described it wasn't growing as much as it was brewing clothing. But it's a it's being led by a company out of London called bio couture, where they literally take yeast almost, and it's a very specific way of doing this. And they put this into a container, and they can grow fabric and grow textiles, because the yeast will grow to the shape of whatever the container is in. And it's a fascinating process because whenever it comes out, they can process it, they can dye it, they can laser cut it, and by the end of it, it doesn't smell like bread or beer or anything else and it just looks like fabric. And it's a fascinating look at kind of what what a possible new way of doing this that came in a different way really be that was more sustainable. Again, it's still very much in its infancy. But it's it's a really interesting and fascinating thing. One of the more extreme examples that I've seen recently, again, harkening back to Alexander McQueen being such an inspiration was there was a college student recently in London who was able to get some of McQueen's DNA. And who is creating bags and jackets out of what is actually his skin. She was able to take the DNA and actually replicate and grow these big pieces of his skin. So you can now buy a McQueen inspired bag from DNA that was made out of McQueen's synthetic skin, which I think, I don't know, I go back and forth between thinking this is fascinating and a little bit like low grade Hannibal Lecter because I mean, look, that's some Buffalo Bill kind of shutter whenever you're going to be like wearing somebody else's skin. But just the fact that we can do it again, I think looks to what may be possible for that. So Now that I've completely grossed everybody out with that, let's talk about where I actually see this industry going, or what are some of the things that I think could start to become more possible or more plausible to get us to that Iron Man moment. And a lot of the things that we're starting to see are materials that are smarter. There's a company called aero chromatics, that actually has a pollution detecting shirt. So it will change color if you're in someplace that has really bad air quality. But the place that I think that's the most interesting, and the place that I'm watching the most keenly, actually is coming out of what's being done in the electronics market. Because if you read any of the rumor Mills, they'll start to talk about how probably within the next one to two generations, we're going to get to a place where iPhones, iPads, tablets, phones, things like that are going to be made a flexible display. You started to see this in different applications, but this is literally if you imagine The iPhone screen that you have. But if you could take it, bend it, twist it, wear it as a word on your wrist, put it on the floor, bend it and put it around a cup, do all these different things. So it becomes a bit more like paper than anything else. And this was originally started with the technologies that were done honestly, for the Kindle, which was called e ink, which was these very thin, very flexible black and white displays. That again, could be done in big shapes and could easily be done refreshed, very low energy. So around the end of last year, an interesting company emerged here in New York City. And it was a company called swift where and they went out and did a crowdfunding campaign where they raised just short of a million dollars for these shoes that they were going to be launching. That in itself maybe doesn't sound all that interesting. But what it is, is there were three different types of shoes. They were low tops, medium tops, or high tops and the prices ranged from about 350 to 500. dollars, which for a designer pair of tennis shoes is probably right around in the ballpark. But the interesting thing that they did was that the sides of the shoes on both sides are made out of a bendable waterproof HD display. So if you can basically imagine your iPhone screen on the side and the inside of your shoes. And so what this allows you to do is something that is very, very interesting because it allows you to pair your shoes with an app. And through that app, you can then display static or animated images onto your shoes. So if you want them to change color to change pattern, to be a static image or to be an animation, you can actually have these running on your shoes and to be able to change them every day or any time. And just like with iTunes, they were going to pair this with this real time design marketplace so that you could come in you by a content the same way, you could go to the iTunes store, and you would buy an app, well, you could go and buy different content for your shoes. And as a designer, they wanted to attract designers. So they're setting it up where you can come in, and you can upload your designs. And if it catches on, well, then they'll split the money with you the same way. Again, like it would be if you sold an app on the App Store. That whenever you walk around in the shoes, that they'll actually charge to keep them running that it's using this eating technology. So they're very low power so that you can actually wear them all day. And this is the part that where it gets interesting. Because anytime you're doing this trend spotting, or anytime you're going to try to say Okay, look, I think this is interesting. Or this is a company that's interesting or technology and I want to bet on them. I want to invest in them. Well, it's a bet and bets don't always pay off. And the interesting thing about swift wire is they raised almost a million dollars and went out and had a great video had a bunch of content but over For the last couple months have gone dark, haven't been communicating as much. And this is where the problem comes, is because sometimes you end up with companies that have truly breakthrough products. Sometimes you end up with companies that just have really good marketing videos. And sometimes knowing the difference between the two can become incredibly difficult. So for Swift, where in particular, we're going to have to wait and see if they were just a good marketing stunt. Or if they're a company that's actually going to bring it to market and they've said that it is supposed to launch by December of this year of 2016. So we're gonna keep an eye on them. But the thing that I would say is that whether those shoes end up launching or not, it marks the trend that I see as being something that could holistically disrupt the entire fashion industry. And the reason why I think these are so important is because this type of flexible, customizable display, I think that this very probably could become the next step. evolution in fast fashion. And I think that it has the potential to completely disrupt the fashion industry. Because again, we're seeing this road of all we need is to give the technology a little bit more time. So that we can get thin fabric like displays, ones that could be put on to shirts or pants or shoes, or something like that. Because what that would allow us to do, we would allow us to do something that is completely new but completely familiar. Because what it's going to do is it's going to essentially make your clothes and iPhone. Because if you think about it, you go to Apple, and you buy the container, the form factor, the the simple hardware. And then what you do is you turn to a series of third parties for content, the apps the case the everything else that the actual phone itself, whenever it's off, is nice, but it's really not what makes It's special. It's the content that's loaded onto it that brings it to life. We'll take that same thought, take that same model, and let's move it to fashion. So that what if you went to a store? What if you went to a company, we'll say there'll be come the next apple. And whenever you went there, you bought whatever style shirt you liked. short sleeve, long sleeve, tank top, button down, pullover, whatever it is, but it's just simply a blank shirt the same way as whenever you'd buy a phone, very familiar model. And you would buy this shirt, and you would take it home very much like an iPhone. And what you would then do is that you would then go out to these different fashion houses for content. So if I wanted a Gucci shirt one day and a Louis Vuitton shirt The next day, well, what I would do is I would go out and I would buy those patterns, those colors, I would buy what it is that I wanted, and load that content into the shirt. Again, that's a very, very A familiar model. But what that does is it holistically up ends and disrupts the fashion industry for a few different reasons. One is because it will allow them to stop being manufacturers, which is essentially something they've been trying to do for a while whether they want to admit it or not. With fast fashion, they continue to devalue the quality of their clothes. In many cases, for many of the houses, they have most of their work made as cheaply as they can, often resorting to some very interesting tricks where some incredibly expensive handbags and things like that are made in China. And they're assembled in China, except for one little thing, the tag that says the name of the brand, and that those bags are shipped from China back to France or England or wherever it is, where that tag is then sewn in. They then say that they can justify the words Made in France or made in England, even though that's a complete lie. But what does would allow them to do is to get out of the manufacturing business. And it would allow them to truly become content curators that it would allow them to really just focus on their design, or in some cases with the high end houses, if they wanted to come out with a very special shirt, a very special design that would be more bespoke or more custom, they could concentrate on that. But what it would do is it would turn these houses into content platforms, they become content curators, and that is a complete disruption of what it is that they've built. Because then it really only does sit on the power of their brand, on the quality of what they do. And that all of a sudden, all these other things become much less important. And I think that if you think about this, that's just the beginning. Because yes, I could get content from the fashion houses to reflect the brands that I like, but we could push it so much further. Think about whenever we think influencers? Well, what would advertisers do for something like that? Whenever all of a sudden people become human billboards? I mean, can you imagine the money that Kim Kardashian or Kanye or Jay Z would get paid by a brand to advertise on their shirt, or as they walk around in our photograph, the ability to change what was there? That alone would be unbelievable that the cooler the person was, the bigger their influence, the more it would cost to be on their clothes, to do it another way where if all of a sudden, it became contextual. So if the sleeve of your shirt started to show you offers whenever you walked into a store into a mall, again, this is going to be something that could be incredibly interesting or could literally become the most annoying thing in the entire world. But the ability to then have context aware so that if this was something that we would say, you went out running, and I wore the shirt during the day, and I was at work, it just was a nice blue checkerboard. But at night I wanted to go out and wear the same shirt to go running. Well then whenever I went running and it figured out, it was nighttime, the shirt could turn bright yellow or bright orange, or it could flash so that it becomes something that was much more about safety that it understood the context in the location that I was at. And then it could react to that. So that now pieces of clothing became much more multifunctional so that literally I could wear something from day into night and everything in between because it could understand all those sort of things and that it could understand how to be day part and how to be do something else at night. But it's this flexibility of this becoming a content platform, a display platform, all in one thing, and that it also would require us to probably buy less clothing, probably higher price, but much less of it. But that would give us such incredible customization and flexibility to that, that it would completely disrupt the entire industry. Well because of that I You could see why something like this would not be a technology that, you know, a lot of the big fashion brands would be jumping up and down about, because it requires them to become something they aren't even close to being it requires them to understand content, understand design and digital technology and create an entire new ecosystem that they're not even beginning to think about. Which, if you think about it, if you just simply change the words, fashion for the word music, sounds very much like the state of that industry before the iPod came out, completely disrupting by bringing a new form factor, making them suddenly all about content, killing CDs, killing records, and all these other things, for digital delivering, we've seen it with music, we've seen it with movies, and so many other things. So I don't really understand why people aren't kind of more aware of the fact that fashion I think easily could become a fast follower to this. So that's the trend that I see. And I think that this again, is going to take a little bit of time to get there, but what are we talking about trends Whenever I do these shows, that's what I'm going to want to focus on. Because I think those are the things that you need to be aware of are the things that aren't quite here yet, but you can keep an eye on, you can think about you can try to plan for them and understand how can you position your work? or How can you position your brand to take advantage of that. Or if you're feeling ambitious, give me a call. And we can go to a startup to be able to start kind of working on this because I have a lot more ideas of how this could actually come to life than what I've talked about here. So that's really kind of where I see this headed, is it is so ripe for disruption, that there's so much potential here. There's so much money here. Somebody's gonna do it, somebody's gonna get there. And as the technology keeps getting thinner as the displays keep getting different, as fashion continues to retains such a vaulted place in our society with so many who are at best shows after every award show magazines filled with this content, the ability to truly redefine this to bring technology into this And to allow it to become something that is never even been dreamed of before. Well that has the potential of making more money than I think anybody could ever possibly imagine. I'm going to put links to all this to the companies that I've talked about to these different products to some of the videos to the Met show all these things in the show notes if that's something you want to find out more about, head over to podcast dot Stephen Gates calm STP h n gates comm if you have any questions, if you want to know more about anything if you want me to talk about more of something less of something, love it, hate it or anything in between, shoot me an email, you can send it over to ask at Stephen Gates calm and I'll answer those just as quickly as I can and get any content you want to hear into a future show. As always, the boys on legal want to remind you, everything I talked about are my own opinions. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And if you could be so kind head over to iTunes, head over to Google Play, leave a review. It makes a big deal. difference and it's the only payment I ever asked for, for listening to the show. So I say it every time because I mean it every time. But thank you for your time. Time is the truly the only luxury that we have. And I'm always incredibly grateful and humbled that you want to spend any of it with me. So until next time, and as always, stay crazy