Pratt Institute fashion student scoops Top Award in Live Couture Event

02 Dec '08

4 min read

Fujifilm's Z Spot New York kicked off with a Fashion & Technology Panel that featured various luminaries from the fashion, design, education and technology industries going head-to-head on the pervasive interdependence of fashion and technology.

Panelists included:
- Phillip Bloch (Fashion 'Guru' & Celebrity Stylist)
- Kevin "Saer" Leong (Vice-President of Simmons Design and Head Designer for Phat Farm & Baby Phat)
- MJ Diehl (Co-Founder and Creative Director, House of Diehl - Inventor of Style - Battling & Co-Producer of Style Wars)
- Tom Samiljan (Technology Writer and Blogger, AOL's Switched.com)
- Sabine Seymour (Author & Professor, Parsons the New School for Design)
- Jill Singer (Managing Editor, I.D. Magazine)

As technology companies increasingly partner with top designers to create stylish fashions, panelists discussed the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, the role technology plays in a fabric or article of clothing and the growing push to create eco-friendly fashion and technology.
Panel quotes:

Attributed to MJ Diehl, Co-Founder and Creative Director, House of Diehl: "Technology is the new little black dress. Ultimately, fashion shouldn't just be pretty, it should be powerful. Everyone needs a little black dress, and by combining the power of technology with fashion, great designers are able to design products to create the lifestyle that people need."

Attributed to Tom Samiljan, Executive Editor, AOL's Switched.com: "Customization is a key trend resulting from the intersection of technology and fashion. Everyone has an iPhone, but it's what you do with it -- for example, adding customizable skins and face plates -- that adds that extra edge of style."

Attributed to Sabine Seymour, Author and Professor, Parsons the New School for Design: "Fashion and technology also merge with the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology. Any type of technology can be incorporated into garments, but the next step would be to confirm the actual context of use. For example, for communication purposes. This is already starting with small entrepreneurial artists and designers beginning to combine the two, like my company Moondial."

House of Diehl fashion battle
- In a live 'fashion battle' produced by House of Diehl, four students from NYC's top design schools were asked to created couture designs on live models using wide format inkjet photo prints produced by the Epson/Fujifilm Stylus Pro 7880 Wide Format Printer on FUJIFILM Photo Paper Satin 270.
- Prior to the event, each designer was provided with a different color FinePix Z20fd digital camera by Fujifilm -- green, blue, pink and white with pink polka dots. These colors served as the inspiration for the photos which became the "fabric" of the designers' creations.
- The cast of CW's "Stylista," including Ashlie Buttler, Cologne Schmidt, William Buckley, Danielle Scott and Dyshaun Burton, served as guest judges for the fashion battle, and selected Julie Mollo, a junior fashion design major at Pratt Institute, as the winner for her fun, flirty and quirky cocktail dress design inspired by Fujifilm's white and pink polka dot FinePix Z20fd.

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