Wallet magazine is exploring how tech is reinventing the fashion machinery

Each issue of Wallet, Elise By Olsen’s pocket-sized publication, is shaped as its own series of holistic conversations around a pertinent theme for the fashion industry to confront. The first, “Admins of Authority”, was an urgent dialogue on power in fashion and the people who wield it, while “Pioneers of Publishing” chronicled the latest evolutions in the fashion press. Other issues have touched on physical space, from studio to workshop and factory, to the nebulous state of fashion education, casting, retail and the marketplace. Now with the eighth issue, By Olsen offers up “Titans of Tech”, a conversation on the continuous merging of technology and fashion.

“Technology has been an underlying conversation – a thematic throughline – in all of our previous issues,” By Olsen, who was previously editor and founder of renowned youth culture magazine Recens Paper, says. “So finally it made sense to do an issue on the continuous merging of fashion and technology. During COVID-19, we’ve seen a spontaneous embrace of virtuality across design, marketing, and retail – fashion is increasingly happening online, through various platforms.”

This issue, created by By Olsen and designed by Morteza Vaseghi as part of their joint venture ECUDORP, features three major conversations with prominent fashion and tech innovators: designer Ying Gao, chief digital officer of LVMH Ian Rogers, and designer Natsai Audrey Chieza. Presented together, they expand the dialogue around fashion’s continued pursuit of innovation, from the production line to grassroots designers, and how we live and dress. A visual essay features 20 fashion practitioners interrogating these themes with their work – Alexander McQueen, Fecal Matter, Iris van Herpen, Hermés, BLESS, Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan, Thom Browne, and Neri Oxman.

Now, as fashion embraces more virtuality, how will fashion-tech impact the industry in philosophical, conceptual, and aesthetic ways? This becomes all the more topical as fashion grapples with the constraints – or, pressured liberations, however you look at it – of the pandemic. “Our perceived idea of fashion technology might have been strictly linked to garments, textile and wearables, while huge technological innovation has and is happening in retail and dissemination of fashion,” By Olsen explains. “Fashion’s constant pursuit of innovation is essentially not restricted to fashion’s own production line, it is certainly something that will dramatically impact the way we actually live – and dress in – our lives. Technology is no longer just an element, but a condition of fashion.”

Working through the pandemic and ensuing lockdown, by Olsen explains the struggles felt as an independent publisher operating with limited resources, finding printers closed and a huge number of previously published publications stuck in a warehouse. “What do we do when all existing institutional modes of production, publishing and distribution vanish in crisis?” By Olsen asks. “I believe it will be important for independent publishers to rewire their business models and perhaps also be less dependent on advertising, seeing as the budgets too have decreased, and look more towards long term brand partnerships or even private funding. Our work within the fashion machinery usually depends on traveling, global meeting activity, and networking — always onto the next, accelerating at a fast pace and constantly being responsive, whether it’s attending fashion weeks, fairs or generally being present on the circuit. 

“I hope that’s made space for creating new consciousness and criticality around the fashion realm and its apparatus, as the speed, cycles, and seasons – the very structures this sector is built upon – have been completely interrupted.”  

Below is an excerpt from Wallet’s “Titans of Tech”.

PRELUDE, ISSUE EIGHT

The eight edition of Wallet, “Titans of Tech”, is a conversation on the continuous merging of fashion and technology. Technology seems to be an underlying conversation – a thematic throughline – in all of our previous issues, whether it be authority, publishing, education, space, retail, casting and marketing. This has raised the interesting and complex question: what exactly is technology – and what is its relationship to fashion production, both material and immaterial? In this issue, we will bring fashion and technology to the forefront and take a more extensive look at the issues pertaining to it. We will take two steps back, and hopefully a few forward, to do a very brief historical walkthrough of technological innovation in fashion today. We set out to explore technologies of innovation and production, mediation, promotion, distribution, and sales. Where has fashion technology been and where will it go moving forward? Is the constant pursuit of innovation restricted to fashion’s own production line, or is it something that will dramatically impact the way we actually live – and dress in – our lives? 

The industrial revolution, which gave birth to industrial, financial, and all sorts of capitalisms, was the marriage between technology and the fashion industry. This relationship has run synchronously for a much longer period of time, and technology has been involved in the production of textiles and garments from the get go. The innovations in garment manufacturing in the 19th century spawned the industrial revolution around the world, including its many horrors relating to slavery, resource extraction, and factory labour. The post-industrialisation technologies of the late-20th century marked the rise of branding and the offshoring of manufacturing. Since the new millenium, we’ve found ourselves in a rapidly-changing field of digitisation of fashion production, distribution, and sales. This pertains not only to marketing – now increasingly happening in virtual spaces and via social media – but also to supply chains and garment manufacturing, which are increasingly dictated by real-time market data from around the world. Technology is no longer just an element, but a condition of fashion.

“Where has fashion technology been and where will it go moving forward? Is the constant pursuit of innovation restricted to fashion’s own production line, or is it something that will dramatically impact the way we actually live – and dress in – our lives?”

The idea of technology in fashion reaches wide, and although some parts of this symbiosis might be clear and easily accounted for, it might not be so tangible for all parts. New manifestations of this relationship arise in tandem with markets and services. Today, digital fashion retail platforms consider themselves primarily as tech companies whose technological innovation can be marketed to clients far beyond the fashion circuit. Inversely, there are tech companies who almost overnight have come to structure the very basis of the fashion industry. Instagram is the current prime example of this, initially a portfolio-type image-sharing app for creatives, which, after a billion dollar acquisition by Facebook in 2012, has merged into a fashion publishing, news, retail, advertising, and networking platform all under one roof.

This challenges some of the most historically ingrained elements of fashion promotion, as evidenced with the exodus from print advertising by many luxury brands. Simultaneously, young and independent fashion talent across the world are using Instagram to by-pass exclusive production- and retail partnerships, producing new fashion micro-economies by speaking directly to its specialised customer base. It would be impossible to say whether Instagram and other social media platforms are “good” or “bad” for the industry – but certainly, the way it disrupts conventions, and inverts hierarchies and power structures offers insight into the differing techno-industrial mechanics of fashion then and now. 

“The way (Instagram) disrupts conventions, and inverts hierarchies and power structures offers insight into the differing techno-industrial mechanics of fashion then and now”

Like in most other industries, you will find a contemporary move towards dematerialisation, digital streamlining, and data-driven predictions. At the same time, fashion’s emergent technologies prove again and again that fashion remains deeply physical, embodied, and irrational. In this issue, we will conduct three interviews with our “Titans of Tech”; fashion designer Ying Gao, who is working with mechanical technologies and innovation, Chief Digital Officer of LVMH Ian Rogers, as well as designer Natsai Audrey Chieza, who is working at the intersection of biotechnology and material science. It is a premise, and partly each of their responsibility, to deal with these seemingly inconsequential issues, and never lose sight of the driving forces that make up the fashion industry: desire and appeal.

These interviews will be accompanied by a visual essay where we have invited 20 different fashion practitioners to interpret the theme of fashion-tech in philosophical, conceptual, and aesthetic terms. They have all involved and activated technology in their work in fashion, albeit on different terms – and highlight a broader observation that technology no longer carries a particular “look”. While innovation is certainly happening in the field of wearable technology, this issue has taught us that fashion technology in the 2020 pertains just as much to systemic innovation – be it for sustainable, commercial, or social ends. 

“Titans of Tech”, the eighth issue of Wallet, is available in MoMa PS1 (New York), The Broken Arm (Paris), Slam Jam (Milan), Tate Modern (London), The Store (Berlin) and Tsutaya Books (Tokyo) now