Fur, Studs, and…Bar Codes: Fashion Week Ditches Clipboard Culture for 2010 Technology

Fashion Week has not only outgrown its famous tents for its Spring 2011 shows, but it has adopted a new GPS system for seating that is making some skeptical about its ability to handle the mob of 100,000 that attends shows from September 9th to the 16th. The new system aims to admit guests faster and in a more orderly fashion than PR assistants have done in the past with their infamous clipboard strategy!

According to New York Magazine’s The Cut, roughly 80% of the designers showing at Lincoln Center next week are participating in the new system. Guests will receive e-mailed invitations and respond electronically via e-mail or a website. Designers linked into the system will be notified of responses and will then send electronic confirmations with bar codes. IMG, the driving force in the global fashion business and bread and butter of Fashion Week, is hoping this new format will eliminate gatecrashers, among other things.

The new system was implemented by technology consulting firm Control Group and Fashion GPS, a digital marketing and event firm. It recently conducted test runs on the technology that it says went well. An IMG spokeswoman also stated:

We will, of course, make a number of adjustments after this first season of using the technology, and have erred on the side of caution when deciding the number of terminals to have on site.

The new kiosk pictured below will debut at New York Fashion Week Spring 2011:

Paper invitations have long held an iconic significance at fashion shows…how will this new technology fare? Get ready, fashion industry! Where will technology lead us next?

- Jen

word. daily. (june 24, 2010)

Vuvuzela It: Since the start of the games there has been a lot of buzz around the vuvuzela – it seems that almost everybody in the United States hates it. But (BUT!) everybody seems obsessed with talking about it. Sensing that, YouTube has added a vuvuzela button that will play the horn noise over the video you’re watching.

Smile Machine: Unilever (an M Booth client) premiered its smile-activated ice cream vending machine at this week’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The high-tech machine uses facial recognition technology to identify a smile and when it does it rewards you with free ice cream. The machines are going to be introduced around the globe over the next year and a half.

Reverse Geocache Puzzle: We’re obsessed with the idea of the reverse geocache puzzle – essentially, it is a GPS-enabled box that can only be opened in one very specific location in the world. We’ve seen them before, but Make Magazine brings us the most compact iteration that we’ve seen yet.

Google Places: Remember when Google Street View was impressive?  “Oh my gosh, you can see the outside of my apartment building!” you might say. That will seem like nothing with the launch of Google Places – the initiative sends a photographer around to snap pics of the inside of businesses with the hope that consumers will use the data to inform their purchasing decisions.

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—Andrew

word. daily. (may 14, 2010)

App Localizer: Apple has filed an application for a newly-published patent that involves temporary location-based apps. An example: Upon walking into a restaurant, temp icons specific to that establishment would pop up on your iPhone, telling you the “Wait Time” and asking you to “Place Order.”

My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress: When “man and wife” became just “man,” he didn’t know what to do with his time. His ex-wife took virtually everything (including the kids) but the one thing she left was her wedding dress. In an attempt to fill the void, he created this blog – My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress – and is documenting all the different uses for one, including Grill Cover and Dental Floss.

Twitter to the Rescue: A man in Japan tweeted that he needed toilet paper and 20 minutes later, he got some. That’s a long time but still, Internet: 2, Humans: 0.

Click here to let us know that you’d like to be added to the mailing list for the monthly edition of “word.”

—Andrew

Louis Vuitton Gets Techie

Okay, so this is interesting, but it needs to be properly fleshed out in order to actually be cool – and I’m not sure what its ultimate purpose is, as of yet. Nonetheless, it feels exciting, which is usually the emotion elicited from us when we have the sense that something has potential to create change.

Speaking of emotions, here is the premise (courtesy of Jaunted): Louis Vuitton is rumored to be working on a bag accessory that will act as an “emotion monitor” by reading its owner’s heart rate and then syncing up with the owner’s mobile device, super-imposing this data onto a route map. Essentially, you would be able to look back along your strolls through Manhattan (or any lesser city – kidding, sort of!) and correlate where you were with how you were feeling at the time. Already, without the fancy monitor, I’m going to guess Saturday nights could get a little off-the-charts.

From Louis Vuitton’s perspective, this could provide interesting marketing data. From a consumer’s perspective, I’m just not sure how relevant it is to me to have my emotions monitored throughout the day as a function of where I’m going. As a psychology major, I think there are a lot of caveats to this program – we are continuously imprinted on by a myriad of factors in our environment. There is really no way to determine that it was physical location, as opposed to factors such as smell, social company or proximity to designer clothing that had our heart beat in a frenzy.

Also, why Louis Vuitton? How does this tie into fashion, beyond the fact that it attaches to a handbag and looks pretty? Once again, it’s cool, just because it’s always a bit cool when we remember we are biological beings…and we also seem to be obsessed with tracking things (Foursquare, anyone?) – but I’m not sure the concept has reached its full potential.

-Kristin

iCurfew Is Like FourSquare for Teens and Nervous Parents

TechCrunch posted today about an interesting new iPhone application called iCurfew, which allows kids to send their parents an e-mail showing their location. Sort of like FourSquare, but that only the ‘rents can see. It’s certainly an interesting idea — when my brother and I were in high school, we usually preferred to check in with my mom via text message rather than a phone call. I suppose this would be one step easier and makes it harder for teens to be dishonest about their whereabouts (not that I ever was, since I was — and am — a total goody two-shoes). However, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington suggests that kids will find loopholes, like “pay[ing] off someone to hold onto your phone and hang out at the movie theater messaging nice things to your parents while you are off doing God knows what.”

Does this app build trust and encourage communication between parents and children like it claims, or is it too “Big Brother“-ish and will make kids go to greater lengths to conceal their whereabouts? Either way, I think the more important question here is, “Why does your 16-year-old have an iPhone in the first place?”

—Alyssa

Where in the World is Real Good Chair?

If you see a chair like this on the sidewalk, grab it! Inspired by the culture of “curb-mining” (finding cool things on the sidewalk and bringing it home with you), Soho furniture store Blu Dot began an experiment to track the journey of these sidewalk treasures. Beginning today, 25 of these chairs will be placed all over NYC, up for grabs for whomever spots it first. Many of these chairs will be GPS-equipped so we can all keep track of where they are and where they ultimately end up. The chairs’ journeys will be updated on the website and on Twitter.

Maybe following the travel patterns of a piece of furniture doesn’t sound appealing to you, but this whole experiment will culminate in a documentary featuring the chairs’ final owners, set to be released during Blu Dot’s one-year anniversary of its Soho store opening.

Personally, I think this is a classier way to get on camera than The Real World or The Bachelor. But then again, I also have a weird fascination with furniture…

- Kelly

Drivers Receive Real-Time Traffic Info via Cell

A new software program allows San Francisco-area drivers to view real-time traffic conditions on their cell phones.  According to MediaPost, “as drivers pass certain locations marked with GPS coordinates, the phones will send speed and location information to computers, which will compute the data, determine speeds and travel times, and then send the aggregated information back to drivers’ phones.”

Just imagine how marketers will be able to leverage this technology!

-Megan