Last week saw Glamour magazine team up with the Council of Fashion Designers of America to host Dressed to Code, a fashion hackathon, in honour of New York Fashion Week.
Following initiatives such as Code First: Girls, it would be great to see fashion, a female dominated industry, get more involved with tech in London as London Fashion Week dawns. After all, the amount of fashion apps and websites out there show there is a demand for fashion-based tech.
The event saw developers, entrepreneurs and designers spend the day creating games, apps and tool to engage the fashion industry. And, much like many current campaigns to get more women into tech, this event had more than 50% women present, as opposed to the usual 5% at usual hackathons.
Shan-Lyn Ma, founder and CEO of Zola, told US News: "You couldn’t find these types of events. Today, it’s thrilling to see New York City really driving innovation in Fashion Tech. As we saw at the Hackathon, only in NY can you find a lauded Fashion magazine such as Glamour investing to drive innovation. Nowhere else have I seen developers, UX designers and fashion lovers all working side by side to create new technologies to show beloved fashion superstar Rebecca Minkoff their prototypes, all in one day."
Some big software developer names were in attendance, including Facebook, Tumblr, Gilt, Aviary and Glamour to offer their assistance at the hackathon.
Executive digital director for Glamour, Mike Hofman, said: "In terms of trends, I think lots of teams looked for mobile solutions to help women get outfit idea inspiration and shopping tips by sharing content such as selfies, snaps of their closet and even sample sale intel — the editors in attendance really liked that last idea a lot."
Once the teams had completed their apps, they presented their prototypes to a panel of judges including fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, Vine cofounder Rus Yusupov and Wanelo founder Deena Varshavskaya.
The winner was Thrifter; an app designed by Michelle Austria Fernandez and David Lau that allows people to sell and bid on clothes and accessories.
Fashion apps and websites such as Net-a-porter and Style.com are always growing in popularity, and events like London Fashion Week which as seeing increasing online coverage give the perfect opportunity to open the fashion world up to technology or vice versa.
Models and spectators alike have been seen wearing Google Glass on and beside the catwalk, so why not continue the fashion and technology fusion?
