On the occasion of Fashion Tech Week Paris, which will open its doors on October 14th, its co-founder Claire Eliot tells us more about this event "advocating a new fashion system, more open and interdisciplinary, highlighting younger generations who have something new to offer".

By Ludmilla Intravaia

Le Boudoir Numérique : In your work, you wear two hats, since you are both designer and researcher in e-textile. What are your activities ?

Claire Eliot, co-founder of Fashion Tech Week Paris : I studied fashion at Duperré School (Parisian College of Applied Arts, AN). I then developed my technical skills in industrial design, at ENSCI (National School of Industrial Design, Paris, AN), while learning electronics, as an autodidact. As a researcher-teacher at CRI, the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity in Paris, I'm part of the Motion Lab, the laboratory for body, movement and digital devices, where we think about how to revisit digital tools and our corporal relationship to them, especially without using screens. I'm working on how textile can create flexible digital tools, where one will, for example, touch a flexible interactive material, rather than a smooth interface, to interact with an electronic device, through motion more close to what we know as a human being, more organic, physical, tangible and less static. For example, educate young children, through an e-textile cuddly toy, rather than a digital tablet. I remain a designer, because I continue to manufacture objects related to my research, while engaging in a fundamental reflection, more detached from the finished product. My profile is really between research and design, in a digital era where everything is going so fast that we have to constantly rethink the digital devices at our disposal. In this sense, I share the point of view of the collective “Design en recherche” (“Design in Research”, a network of young researchers in design, formed in 2013, AN) who considers that the designer can also be a researcher.

Isn't it the very same concept of the fashion and research seminar of Fashion Tech Week Paris, of which you are the co-founder ?

Absolutely. We advocate a new system for fashion, more open, more communicative, leaving room for younger generations who have something new to offer. So that they are not alone in the battle, we founded the association La Fashiontech, bringing together the ecosystems of fashion and technology. Around our events, including Fashion Tech Week Paris, we federated a community of sharing and collaboration, in France and abroad. With rendezvous such as FashionPitch Night or FashionTech Expo, we try to highlight startups that need to be helped, to make them known, based on our specific fashion tech network. Regarding the fashion and research seminar, its goal is to bring together researchers and designers, to make them think about issues of textiles and fashion. If I'm lucky enough to have this dual profile designer and researcher, it's not always easy for them to meet and work together. With this conference, we want to give them an opportunity to do so. Last year, we invited researchers and this year, on the contrary, we want to highlight designers, involved in a scientific approach. This theme of interdisciplinarity is fundamental, because fashion and technology still have trouble communicating.

Why ?

The fashion and technology sectors have always worked independently. Already, the arts and sciences discipline has only been recognized for a few years, even though many artists have always incorporated a scientific part into their works. Things are evolving positively but there is still a separation between fashion and science, as well as between the work of the hand and the intellectual work. The designer is the only one to combine these two dimensions but, apart from him, the know-how and the knowledge are still very often disconnected. We must combine the gesture of fashion, its style, its aesthetics, its materials to the scientist's thought, to the fundamental, intellectual and cartesian research. At the crossroads of these two worlds, the global designer will be the catalyst between fashion and technology.

Perhaps brands do not want to take risks, engaging in the unknown terrain of tech ?

I understand the difficulties that fashion has with the use of technology. For instance, those two worlds don't have the same temporalities. Batteries are decreasing in size, chips are becoming more powerful, communication protocols are constantly diversifying, phones are changing all the time, in short the electronics evolve much faster than fashion, which is more seasonal. A flexible solar panel will not wait for the spring-summer or cruise collection to get out of its research lab. That's why there is a huge amount of work to be done, in terms of embedded electronic systems in the textile industry, to which the technology has to bend, and not the other way around. Electronics engineers need to make new components and systems that fashion can easily incorporate into its creations.

What could this fashion tech alliance bring ?

It can help innovate faster and better think technology to, among other things, improve the positioning of products on the market. Even for big brands with financial means and technological and human resources, it is difficult to integrate technology into clothing and accessories. One could imagine that it is enough to do a little R & D to get there but it is not the case. It is the whole chain of manufacture and assembly that must be changed. Making a hole in a bag is possible but embarking optic fibers in it is another story. Accessory prototypists, for example, are not used to incorporate new technologies into their products. Hence the need to appeal to other skills with which to collaborate harmoniously. A dialogue between the dressmaker and the electronics engineer must be established so that they can finally work together.

* The 7th edition of Fashion Tech Week Paris will take place from October 14 to 20, 2019, in Paris. Website for the event is here.

* The call for projects of FashionTech Expo 2019 is here.

* The call for projects of FashionPitch Night 2019 is here.

 * As part of FTWP 2919, the fashion technology specialized lawyer Naima Alahyane-Rogeon and the smart textile designer Florence Bost will host a breakfast debate, entitled "Data in Fashion - Connected Clothes, Legal and Technical Issues". The event will take place on October 16, 2019, from 9:30 AM to 11 AM, at Alain Bensoussan office, 58 boulevard Gouvion St Cyr, 75017 Paris. All info here. On the occasion of the previous edition of the FTWP 2018, Naïma Alahyane-Rogeon had granted the following interview to Le Boudoir Numérique : "Law and fashion tech : what do you need to know?". Florence Bost exhibits one of her fashion tech pieces at La Manufacture de Roubaix, until October 27, 2019. All informations in this article of Le Boudoir Numérique : "Roubaix welcomes ethical and innovative fashion".

 * Find the photo report of the Boudoir Numérique at the previous edition of the FTWP 2018: "Fashion Tech Week Paris exhibition : what’s new ?". Alice Gras, co-founder of the event, spoke on this occasion in the following interview by Le Boudoir Numérique : "Fashion and technology communicate better".

* Claire Eliot's website is here.

* The website of the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI) is here.

* The Design en recherche website is here.