Fusalp Futur: Creating Connected Fashion with Neue Labs

THE COLLABORATION

Beyond Form recently helped to bring together a partnership with Swedish fashion tech studio Neue Labs and IFA Paris. The collaboration is part of the fashion tech agenda throughout the curriculum and is part of a project delivery with skiwear brand Fusalp. IFA Paris students are tasked with creating connected garments of the future, in which the project culminates in June 2019. We can’t wait to see the final prototypes and what their vision of the future is.

CREATING CONNECTED FASHION

(Article below originally featured on IFA Paris’ blog Mar 2019)

From Wednesday 6th to Friday 8th of February, the Neue Labs team was on our Paris Campus to deliver a workshop on fashion tech to our 2nd year Bachelor Fashion Design & Technology and Bachelor Fashion Marketing students. This continues the second phase of our industry collaboration with Fusalp and Neue Labs to create a technology-forward capsule collection of garments and accessories for the urban consumer, under the theme ‘Fusalp Futur’.

Building on the strategic analysis of the Fusalp Brand conducted by our Fashion Marketing students in the first phase of the project, design and marketing students will collaborate for 16 weeks to develop a 10-piece collection, with technology integrated into the style, function and identity.

Neue Labs, our technological partners on the project, introduced students to their AUTOMAT hardware kit, powered by Playground, Neue’s proprietary software optimized for integrating tech functions into fashion. Over three days, they took our students through the process of building tech into their garments, using the flows on the intuitive Neue Playground Mobile App. Using this, students built QR Code reading functions, NFC sensors and electroluminescent light controls. The team also demoed more advanced functions like Spotify playback via tilt control and inventory tracking through geolocation. In addition, Neue also presented new business models that would shape the future of fashion consumption and production, towards sustainability.

In his remarks, Neue Labs’ founder and CEO, Fredrik Timour shared his perspective on fashion tech,

“When we talk about fashion tech, we talk about digital fashion… the digitalization of the fashion industry, including connected clothes for traceability, transparency and sustainability… as well as the future of fashion ownership and the user experience of wearing clothes, with the opportunity to sell digital services in fashion.”