As we announced last week,
For the second edition of Look Forward Awards, our prestigious jury met over a lunch to deliberate.
The atmosphere was casual, everybody coming for something that they have to heart: discover some crazy FashionTech & BeautyTech projects!
We wanted a heterogeneous panel with tech, fashion, beauty, digital or business points of view in order to guarantee a passionate debate for each projects.
We had the chance to have Pierre-François Le Louët, President at the Fédération du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin and President at Nelly Rodi, as President of the jury. This talented and visionary man, investing in several FashionTech projects, told us « The fashion is mutating: buying habits are changing, new concepts are emerging and new economic models are appearing. We have to support fashion brands throughout this movement and connect all players together, starting with Fashion Tech ones ». He reminds us that the Federation must support innovations and the development of new solutions in order to give a fresh dynamic to fashion led by the Fashion Tech.
« We have to support fashion brands throughout this movement and connect all players together, starting with Fashion Tech ones »
Pierre-François Le Louët, Jury’s President,
President of the Fédération du Prêt-à-Porter Féminin
The 22 projects we spoke about in our previous article have been analyzed by our 9 members of the jury. From Dress in the City to Nike including Spartan or the Data Dress by Google: « When the fashion of tomorrow emerges in the encounter between creation and innovation, a clever mix of these two sectors can be explosive! » said Nicolas Santi-Weil, Founder of The Kooples and CEO at AMI Paris. Pierre-François Le Louët has underlined the diversity of the applications which are at different stages of the value creation of fashion: design, production or distribution.
While some projects have been hailed by the jury thanks to their originality, others have created a real debate because of their pertinence in regards to market expectations, their business model or their scalability.
Sylvie Ebel, member of the Jury and CEO at the Institut Français de la Mode, has highlighted that Fashion Tech is about opportunities and creativity. This reality is already here and we can see it through the diversity of innovations which are amplified by digital revolution. According to her, it’s on this point that the future of the sector is at stake.
The jury members had to choose two winners for each category: Experience Award, Special Award, Fashion Award and Relation Award.
It’s after a long and passionate debate that the laureates have been announced:
EXPERIENCE AWARDS
This prize is awarded to projects allowing the transformation or the extension of customer experience and imagining the future of retail and ecommerce.
MAPO – WIRED BEAUTY
It may look like something out of a bad zombie movie, but Wired Beauty’s Mapo mask is made from medical-grade silicone and filled with a range of sensors that measure your skin’s temperature and moisture level.
This data is then sent to an app on your smartphone, where you can get tips about your beauty regime – like what kind of products you should use.
Once you’ve found the perfect moisturiser, you can then use the Mapo mask, which heats up, to open your pores and supposedly get a more penetrating effect.
According to Stanislas Vandier, President – co-founder, WB Technologies was born from a strong conviction that a new cosmetic should be developed with an open and collaborative approach.
Innovative technology dedicated to beauty will help revolutionize the needs and solutions’ effectiveness, for everyone.
SEPHORA – NEW SEPHORA EXPERIENCE
Sephora’s « Beauty Hub » provides new digital tools to try on products, such as connected machines to order, live tutorials… Sephora reinvents the customer experience with the « New Sephora Experience », a digital concept that fits with the company’s image: bold and nonconformist.
Right from the entrance, customers are introduced with the latest beauty trends: tutorials, last « Made in Sephora » and exclusive products, updated every month on a different theme.
Customers also have access to « Sephora Loves », where they find the firm’s favorites and last new-in-store brands with their main products. The new concept « Beauty Hub », located at the heart of the store, freshen the shopping experience up. Its digital Look book helps clients find inspiration when the « virtual artist » program gives the opportunity to test thousands of different looks on Ipads or connected mirrors. Beauty classes are also given by professionals to diagnose the customer’s type of skin and the compatible products.
The app « Color Profile », developed by Pantone, helps selecting the right shade of foundation and suggests the references available in store according to the skin color.
True to its wish to make its stores a place of liberty and expression, Sephora has implemented a « Beauty Board », a platform to like and tag the products used, with the possibility to share your look with the firm’s beauty community.
With the « New Sephora Experience », beauty shopping is a real game!
SPECIAL AWARDS
This Special Award rewards concepts, creations, products or production process that are surprising, unsettling and innovative.
ZUNGLE – ZUNGLE PANTHER
Zungle is a sunglass manufacturer that recently released a product called the Zungle Panther. Those sunglasses come with bone conduction speakers. These unique speakers deliver sound into your skull through
vibrations. You can clearly hear music when wearing the sunglasses – even though there’s absolutely nothing in your ears.
The Zungle Panther sunglasses look like ordinary sunglasses, but they hide all of their connective technology inside.
Inside the frames of the sunglasses are a microphone and Bluetooth receiver. You wear the sunglasses, connect your phone via Bluetooth, and then can communicate with your friends or listen to music without
whipping out your phone.
Meanwhile, the sound from the sunglasses is delivered into your ear using bone conduction speakers hidden within each end of the frame.
Other key parts of the sunglasses include a “jog dial”, which is a small dial button placed on the right leg of the sunglasses. You can use this dial button to control all the key features of the sunglasses.
The sunglasses are priced at around $100 for one pair.
The Zungle Panther sunglasses were recently launched on Kickstarter, where they’ve already surpassed their $50,000 funding goal many times over. To date, the company has reached a total of over $400,000 in
funding and they still have 23 days to go. They reached their $300,000 funding target in just 6 days.
NIKE – NIKE FUTURE DESIGNERS
Nike being a physical products company, visualization and realization of the end product are crucial. Now with more experiential process through voice, augmented reality, haptics and beyond, teams can create closer to a physical product to test, learn and iterate on product concepts well before production.
In an effort to imagine, form and feel new ideas for next generation footwear faster, Nike explores new technologies, most recently with The Dell Canvas, Ultrahaptics and Meta 2.
The Dell Canvas: a touchscreen allowing people to use their hands in the traditional pen and paper way with modern technology that recognizes touchpoint patterns for faster collaboration.
Ultrahaptics technology manipulates ultrasound, from ultrasonic transducers that enable people to “feel” mid-air gestures through haptic feedback or interact and control virtual objects such as buttons or controllers. Ultrahaptics offers three varying products to help people create, evaluate, experiment and concept new products and experiences.
The Meta 2: Augmented Reality glasses and supporting software developer kit (SDK). The glasses are “see-through” allowing people to always be oriented in their environment (no motion sickness).
Meta 2 enables people to interact with hologram hands to create, touch, manipulate and share their designs.
FASHION AWARDS
Through this prize, the Look Forward FashionTech Festival has chosen to spotlight projects that reinvent the traditional function of clothing, giving it a new dimension!
SKINNERS
Every parent knows that stepping on a LEGO hurts like a motherf—er. Nothing new there. Science even explains why they’re so painful — unforgiving plastic, sensitive foot exteroceptors, etc. But what science fails
to explain is why it took somebody that long to invent a pair of LEGO-proof socks. Doesn’t matter, they have! They’re called Skinners.
Just like da Vinci, they believe that our foot has all the technology we need. They invented Skinners to keep this masterpiece effectively protected and at the same time support all of the amazing things it can already do.
A new footwear product from a company with a Chicago office has gained quite the following on Kickstarter, raising more than $654,000 during its less-than-two-month crowdfunding campaign. They also raised
$1,680,524 on Indiegogo.
In terms of design/materials, this shoe sock brags about the same things most athletic-wear companies do: advanced cooling threads, mesh ventilation zones, enhanced toe protection, and a waterproof “antiabrasive polymer” sole. They’re also anti-bacterial and can go in the washing machine with the rest of your sweaty gym clothes. All the things your gold toes can’t.
Skinners are handmade in the heart of Europe and are produced without harming people, animals or the environment (vegan and barefoot friendly).
PUMA x PINATEX
Pinatex is a new sustainable product made from the fibres of pineapple leaves. Carmen Hijosa, the brain behind the new textile, was working has a designer in the leather industry for many years when she came to the realization, that leather was not a sustainable product. During a trip to the Philippines, she found that many of the local products – bags, fabrics etc. – were made out of the fibres from the pineapple plant. And so the research began.
By using the pineapple leaf fibres, a by-product of the already on-going harvest of pineapples, the waste of the harvest is minimized. Additionally it is worth noting that the leaves does not need any additional land,
watering or fertiliser to be produced – they’re already there!
The fibres get made into a mesh, that goes through mechanic and chemical processes, to get to the finished result. Carmen made sure that the end results was a fabric strong enough to be used as one would use
leather, without compromising the sustainability of the process.
It took around 7 years to develop, what is now Pinatex. A strong and sustainable textile that can be used in everything from bags to furniture. What started as an alternative to leather, have become its own product: companies such as Puma have made prototypes with the textile.
Carmen believes that there is a place for Pinatex in the world – right between leather and petroleum based textiles.
RELATION AWARD
The Relation Award rewards concepts whose vocations is to create a new emotion and relationship between brands and consumers. Sensitive to social and environmental topics, the desire to include consumers and partners in the emergence of new offers adapted to our expectations, our partner and sponsor Aviva wanted to honor these companies who reinvent the Relationships with their clients.
WEARWELL
12+ million garment workers make the clothing we wear every day. Too often, these people are in unsafe conditions and grossly underpaid.
Consider the shirt you have on right now – do you know who made it? Does she or he have a safe working environment or access to clean water?
Wearwell purpose is to create a stronger conscious consumer market. The gamble is that if it were easier to find clothes that were consciously-made and at accessible price points, most people would opt to shop that way. And if more people shopped that way, the industry would be begin to compete for their business.
So How Does It Work?
Tell them about your style, sizing, and the issues that you care about most. They send you a variety of clothes from the latest cool + conscious brands that fit what you are looking for. Clothes that look good + do good, curated just for you by a personal stylist.
UNIBAIL-RODAMCO x DRESS IN THE CITY
Dress in the city is a start up accelerated by UR Link, Unibail-Rodamco incubator, that aims to digitize the second hand retail industry. The start-up has an online shopn together with some popup physical stores within Unibail-Rodamco malls, each time linked to a brand, an event, a theme or as part of an event. Customers can buy or deposit secondhand pieces of clothes.
- You want to buy an item in one of the pop-up stores? Each piece bears a QR code on the antitheft tag, developed by Exaqtworld. The customer scans the code through the Dress in the city app to have all the details about the product (size, material, brand, color…). The client can pay directly through the app. The stores have no check out: the payment through the app unlock the antitheft tag.
- You want to sell an item? You just have to upload a picture and few details about the products. The item is validated in back-office and then appears online. If the seller wants her item to be displayed in a pop-up store, she is free to bring it in.
The partnership between both firms is a wrap since sellers are more likely to invest their earnings within Unibail-Rodamco malls.
GRAND PRIX
The Grand Prize of the Look Forward FashionTech Festival is the highest distinction of this contest. So the winner have to be innovative in terms of creativity and design but also relevant.
UNIBAIL-RODAMCO x DRESS IN THE CITY
Once that all the projects have been watched, the members of the jury have agreed on electing the most visionary project. And the winner is… « Dress in the City » par Unibail-Rodamco. The concept have seduce by its innovation simplify the in-store customer experience thanks to digital. More than a B to C solution, the startup enables brands of the same shopping center to destock unsold items. The low-tech aspect of payment solutions makes Dress in the City easy to apply and suggests that a revolution in the customer experience is about to begin!
It’s time for us to close this second edition of Look Forward Awards. Again this year, the projects submitted have been able to surprise and impress the members of the Look Forward Awards’ jury. Such innovations allow us to see the world of retail, fashion & beauty with another point of view and put some topics as the future of these sectors on the table. It’s with the same enthusiasm and impatience that we are waiting for new concepts and projects. So, see you next year for a brand new edition!
LES MEMBRES DU JURY
Pierre-François Le Louet, Jury’s President
A graduate of the ESCP Europe business school and the IFM (Institut Français de la Mode), 43-year-old Pierre-François Le Louët began his career as a parlimentary assistant before becoming part of L’Oreal’s marketing team in 1998. In 2001 he joined the NellyRodi trends and forecasting agency founded by his mother and was named President in 2003. This contemporary art enthusiast is also President of NellyRodi Inc (New-York), CEO of NellyRodi Japan and President of NellyRodi’s investment subsidiary, MoneyBox. Since 2007 he has served as an Administrator for the Syndicat de Paris de la Mode Féminine; and between 2007 and 2010 and again beginning in 2013 he has been a member of the Fédération Française du Prêt à Porter Féminin’s Board of Directors.
Sébastien Badault
Since 2015, Sébastien Badault is the CEO of the French branch of Alibaba, the famous Chinese e-commerce. He starts his carreer in 1997 as Director of Sales and Marketing at Textuel, La Mine. Three years later, he joins the US e-commerce Amazon as Head of Marketing France before he became European Business Development Manager. In 2004, Sébastien Badault joined Google and take over the Commercial Department.
Nicolas Dreyfus
Gradute of ESC Reims, Nicolas Dreyfus began his career with Constantin group, an international technical network of audit and consulting firm. He started to work for Rexel as internal auditor for Europe, Oceania, North and Latin America 5 years later. Thereupon, he was appointed Chief Financial Officer for Rexel Chili and Rexel UK. In 2004, he joined Banque Accord as Group Chief financial Officer. Finally, he became Chief Executive Officer of the Portuguese subsidiary in 2008 and then CEO at Oney France, the new name of Banque Accord.
Sylvie Ebel
Graduate of HEC Paris, Sylvie Ebel has been Fashion buyer for Printemps during 10 years. She joined the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) as Retail Banner Executive in 1992. She evolved rapidly in IFM and became General Secretary, took over the Education Department and, finally, became Executive Director. She is also a member of IFFTI’s Executive Committee.
Sissi Johnson
Sissi Johnson is the go-to Brand Strategist at the intersection of Fashion, Technology and Lifestyle. Dubbed “The Face of Fashion Tech” as one of the best Instagram to follow by ELLE magazine, she is a host and guest producer of LUISAVIAROMA annual Fashion & Technology Summit. Johnson’s strategic and creative marketing skills sparked successful synergies with leading tech companies such as Airbnb at early stages. With a strong focus on emerging trends, markets and digital anthropology, Sissi’s expertise regulary takes her to international conferences and schools including Oxford, New York University, Marangoni and POLIMODA where she graduated from with a MBA in Fashion Business.
Jérôme Masurel
Jérôme Masurel began his career in NY City with NextStage and then in Rothschild & Cie Private Equity as Analyst. He participated at the launching of Agregator network which created the social network Viadeo. In 2012, he founded 50 Partners which is a support structure. Nowaday, it gathers main French success stories founders (as Blablacar, LeBonCoin or PriceMinister) and innovating projects in B2B and B2B.
Thierry Petit
Thierry Petit is the co-founder of Showroomprive.com, along with David Dayan. Showroomprive is a major European player in the online private sales sector that specialises in fashion. It has been listed on the Euronext Paris market since 2015. An online entrepreneur and business angel, Thierry Petit has almost 20 years of experience in the creation of start-ups and has invested in many online companies. He is also the Vice-President of the Conseil de France Digitale.
Christine Phung
Christine Phung is french fashion designer. She had been working during 15 years for companies including See by Chloé, Baby Dior, Vanessa Bruno or Lacoste. In 2011, she created her own brand and won the Grand Prix of fashion design of the city of Paris. In 2012, she finished her first collection. Now, she has been the Creative Director of the house Leonard since 2016. In nine collections Christine Phung created a wardrobe between elegance and luxury sportswear with some digital inspirations.
Nicolas Santi Weill
After a formation in entrepreneurship, Nicolas Santi-Weil worked at Liste Rouge in Paris. In 2008, he was a Co-Founding Partner and Executive Director at The Kooples. He also invested in Felix Capital and lately he entered in AMI (Alexandre Mattiussi) as Chief Executive Officer.