Matthew Drinkwater started Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) in 2012 as a department of London College of Fashion focussing on using emerging techologies to test the possibilities to reshape the fashion and retail industry. Digitizing is the main focus for FIA, from creating the collection to showcase and retail. FIA have collaborated with Microsoft, Westfield and brands such as JW Anderson and Mulberry.
Tell us a little bit about the concept and idea behind ‘Fashion Innovation Agency’ (FIA).
We explore emerging technology and its impacts on fashion and retail industries and we separate our work into 3 main areas: First, we look at how we can use technology to change the way designers are making their collections - that could be anything from smart materials to smart processes. Second, we investigate how to change the way designers show their collections. We’ve used fashion weeks as a playground testing for those technologies, particularly around immersive technologies (e.g. augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality). Lastly, we use technology to help designers or brands to retail their products and hopefully accelerate the pace of change in the fashion and retail industries.
And what we try to do further is to bring back all of those technologies to college so as to put them into the hands of a new generation. We want to give students an opportunity to become accustomed to new technologies and leave with a much greater depth of understanding of what emerging technologies can do within or adapt to whatever field they’re interested in.
What is the story behind the start of FIA?
FIA was actually born out of European funding almost nine years ago. There was a realization that traditional designer businesses needed to evolve and London College of Fashion (LCF) already had that ambition back in late 2012 to look at where technology could play a part in doing and created FIA.
What I was given 9 years ago was a blank sheet and a lot of our early experiments were looking at how we could bring technology closer to traditional fashion design and to see what conversations could start. The beginning is always difficult. There was a huge gap even in the language that we use between traditional fashion and technology, so the beginning days were about trying to narrow down the giant gap and also recognizing that there was an opportunity to redesign fashion businesses that were struggling very badly to grow. Everybody at that time was creating in exactly the same way: from creating wholesale collections to showing those in the Fashion Week. We recognized that there was an opportunity to do something different and we were exploring different approaches in the very early days.
What stage do you think we are now at, digitizing fashion?
I think we’re still at the very early stage and the reason I say that is if I look across the industry, there are simply not enough skill sets within individual businesses to allow huge digital transformation. A lot of that in my opinion is based on the small number of digital designers that are coming out into the market. Obviously, LCF really focuses on digital fashion education. And it does also point to the tools themselves and what’s available. For example, a lot of the digital design tools that are great to use if you come from a pattern cutting background, but perhaps less so intuitive for the traditional design background. When we look at the journey of traditional designers - to pick up pencils and do paper sketching and then handing that over
to a pattern cutter, so begins the process. At the moment we need to transition to work natively within 3D and that jump still has some way to go.
That transition to fully digital has happened but we need a lot more to come through with an understanding of how to best apply the technology and for the tools to evolve over time. We’re seeing an explosion of interest from luxury brands to startups. Looking at what’s happening already, there’s this big bubbling growing market for new businesses, new experiences, new ways of creating products. We need to harness some of that magic and get some of the core skills embedded into our graduates.
Can you tell me about the project of the Metaverse at London Fashion Week?
We had a collaboration with Lucasfilm (which produced Star Wars and its visual effects) in 2018 to create the world’s first real-time augmented reality fashion presentation.
Lucasfilm has a team called ILMxLAB, which is focused on immersive experiences. In 2015, we started talking about what might be achievable to digitize and create more immersive experiences within fashion but it was probably a bit early. However, from 2016 onwards, those conversations started to get a little bit more serious. There’s a lot of talk about metaverse right now, but back then, we were envisioning what this could look like: As you open your door if you hold up a mobile phone or put on a pair of AR glasses that you would be able to see this digital world all around you and that was the inspiration for that project.
We brought in Steven Tai, a London based designer, to work on this project with us. His collection was about the city of Macau (which is where he was born). We decided that rather than writing show notes (what Stevern usually did), we can literally take people into the city of Macau - and that’s what we did. The show took place in a beautiful venue in central London (Durbar Court), and we overlaid a digital version of the city of Macau onto that physical environment. The venue of the show was changing in real time in a 30-min cycle from the city of Macau to an overgrown jungle. That means the longer you stay at the presentation, the more you can see. Other than that, we also had a digital “virtual” model, driven in real-time by a motion capture performer, interacting on stage with real live models. You have this amazing distinction between real life models and digital models. This represents the first step towards a new type of showcase - one that connects real-time visual effects onto a physical environment. Where traditional shows can sometimes last only moments, this presentation engaged an audience of 1,000 people for the 2 hour duration. It was an amazingly exciting project. And just an early example of what metaverse experiences are going to look like.
Can you tell me a little bit about your collaboration with Microsoft?
We had a really long standing relationship with Microsoft over a number of years. We started collaborating with them as an incubator in 2016 to simply give students the tools and come up with ideas and then make a final presentation. In the following year, we moved on to an accelerator program, which was looking for more real business ideas with the use of technologies such as mixed reality, artificial intelligence or wearable technology. We selected a few groups of students and had a three month intensive session of workshops to formulate their final pitch ideas with competition for awards which culminated in a presentation at Spitalfields Market. The winner was Ashwini Deshpande’s zero-waste pattern-cutting idea.
What do you think about the direction and the balance of digital and physical fashion?
When we talk about ‘digital vs. physical’, it’s almost as if physical fashion sees digital as a replacement threat, and it’s not that at all. ‘Digital fashion’ is additive to physical fashion; it’s something that allows you to express yourself in a different way. As digital fashion technology evolves, you’ll see an explosion of creativity around digital mediums that allow creating fashion that removes all of the limitations that surround physical. Clearly, you’re going to be able to create within the digital world what is impossible to create in the physical one. Digital fashion represents a massive opportunity for us to create extra excitement and joy around an industry.
Looking at what we did with Lucasfilm back in 2018, it was just a start of experimenting with how we could augment what we were wearing with real-time visual effects. In my point of view there will be more acceptance of these types of digital and physical overlapping experiences as technology evolves.
What is your vision for FIA?
My vision for FIA is to continuously explore new technologies and be a guiding light of “something new” for the fashion industry. You can see us experimenting and taking risks that perhaps traditional businesses cannot do; we operate within a space that allows for research and experimentation. The FIA team and I are dedicated to ensuring that what we’re doing is pushing boundaries and creating aspirational projects and experiments that inspire a new generation to pick up those tools to create their own experiences or even businesses within a digital space.
Tell me “Something New”.
The industry is obsessed with ‘New’, isn’t it? I think a topic that will become increasingly important - ‘digital pollution’. Everybody is talking about the impact of the physical fashion industry on the environment. We also have to consider the impact of the digital fashion industry on the environment and on our mental health as well. Digital pollution is a topic that I want us to consider as we begin to imagine a world where there is digital content all around us all the time. Every project that we build has to be considered in light of what we think is right, what is enhancing our lives and what is not doing that. ‘Digital pollution’ is one that I would like to see discussed more.