'HOP-Magazine' article: Wearable tec' - geek or chic?

Originally published in "House of Papillon" magazine (www.hop-magazine.com) - November 2014:

Wearable tech' Geek or chic?                            by Russell Higham, 4th Nov. 2014

When was the last time you saw somebody talking in the street on their Bluetooth headset and thought “That guy looks SO cool”? Hmmm…I'm still racking my brains too. Wearable technology is a nascent trend that’s been around since the days of Star Trek but it rarely ever looks like something you’d actually want to be seen wearing. Now that it’s got the attention of some major players in the fashion and technology industries, however, could things be about to change? The Apple Watch, Fitbit Flex, Google Glass, Nike FuelBand – are these the front runners of a style that's going to be around for the long-haul and become as mainstream and popular as the smartphone itself has become, or are they destined to be labelled as future fashion fails? Let's look at some current offerings.

Useful doesn't have to mean utilitarian: the Puls Smartcuff, recently launched by ex-Black Eyed Pea Will.i.am in collaboration with designer Zaha Hadid, is a seriously good looking bit of kit that offers genuine innovations – such as having its own SIM card so you don't need a mobile phone to use it – that set it apart from offerings by Apple and Samsung.

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This illuminated evening clutch bag from Moon Berlin uses LED lights to create a luxurious and futuristic effect; it also applies the same technology to its range of eye-catching cocktail dresses.

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Futuristic is not a word we’d use, however, to describe this attempt at wearable tech' by the girls' team on 'The Apprentice'. Those solar-panelled shoulder pads look distinctively 'Dallas' circa 1981...more gin, Sue Ellen?!

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The Pebble Steel pulls off the neat trick of being a useful smartwatch that is compatible with Apple and Android phones whilst actually managing to looking vaguely desirable and not like the bastard offspring of a Casio calculator and a piece of jewellery from PoundLand.

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Talking of bizarre mutations, here we have the Adidas “Barricade” trainers with built-in LED Twitter display. Designed for Olympic athletes to check their feed for encouraging tweets from fans as they tie their shoe-laces before events, we can only shudder and hope that these monstrosities never hit the High Street

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The HelloMEMi bracelet, on the other hand (or wrist, to be more specific) isn't so much visually offensive as just plain pointless. It vibrates when your iPhone receives a call, text or calendar alert. All very useful for around £100 but, erm, doesn't the iPhone do that already?

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Wearable technology really does have the potential to be the next big thing but, in order to have enduring mass appeal, manufacturers need to address some key points:

Product design will need to give greater attention to form and not just function with only a vague nod to aesthetics. Overtly masculine, sport-centric pieces do not always appeal to female consumers; a recent survey showed that women actually buy more tablets, laptops and smartphones than men* so this is a market that companies ignore at their peril.

The technological aspect of the product should not be too conspicuous: it's all very well living on the bleeding edge, but nobody wants to see the messy bloodstains.

The item should address a need that consumers actually care about enough to purchase a device for and keep it charged up. Which brings us on to battery life – if your cool new piece of kit is so power hungry that you don't dare venture more than fifty feet from an electricity socket, it's going to have limited appeal.

Apart from a few collaborations (such as on the Smartcuff, above), wearable tech' is almost virgin territory for designers and is ripe for tech-savvy fashion houses to gain first-mover advantage with some slick, contemporary designs that start making serious in-roads into a business which is forecast to be worth $10 billion by 2016 and can only get bigger in the future.

* source: Parks Associates

'HOP-Magazine' article: Apple is getting serious about fashion…and China

Originally published in "House of Papillon" magazine (www.hop-magazine.com) - October 2014:

Apple is getting serious about fashion…and China            by Russell Higham, 14^th Oct. 2014

Chinese supermodel Liu Wen stares alluringly from the cover of the November issue of Vogue China, proudly wearing an 18-carat gold Apple Watch teamed with a striped Celine dress, in what is the first fashion magazine appearance of the new device anywhere in the world. The twenty-six year old ex-Victoria’s Secret model was also seen last month at an Apple Watch event held at top French store Colette during Paris Fashion Week, at which many of the fashion industry’s great and good (icy editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour, and slightly preposterous poseur-with-a-ponytail, Karl Lagerfeld, to name just two) were also on show.

Geek may have been chic for a while but Apple are now banking on us binning our Cartiers, TAG’s and Rolexes and queueing up outside the glass, wood and steel temples-to-cool that are their retail stores to buy their latest American-designed, Chinese-made ‘must-have’. Apple’s head of design, Chingford-boy-made-good, Jonny Ive, and seventeen of his Californian colleagues had been holed-up in Cupertino working secretly for three years on the device, which is not due for release until early next year, but there is nothing secret about the company’s desire to grab themselves a hefty chunk of the $1.5 trillion a year fashion business, after having utterly conquered the technology market in which it has made its fortune; Apple is now worth $119 billion and is officially recognized as the “world’s most valuable brand”. It has also been adding heavy hitters from the fashion industry to its payroll. In September 2013 it hired Yves Saint Laurent ex-CEO Paul Deneve as VP of “special projects”; Paul has also run other fashion and luxury goods companies including Nina Ricci and Lanvin. Then, this year, it hired the former head of Burberry, Angela Ahrendts, to be its “Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores”.

Apple is also starting to learning that consumers like to be given choices: the Watch will come in many different options rather than just as a “one size fits all, take it or leave it” offering like the original 2007 iPhone. It will be available in three ‘collections’ starting at $349 for the basic version, ranging through to the upscale ‘Edition’ which is expected to retail for thousands of dollars (although Apple have not confirmed pricing yet), putting it firmly in luxury territory. It will be pitched against some stiff competition in a booming market for wearable tech’ which has already seen some collaborations with the world of fashion: designer Tory Burch has designed accessories for the Fitbit range of activity trackers, Diane von Furstenberg has added her own slant on eyewear to Google Glass and Diesel have announced a range of wrist-bands to accompany the Samsung Gear smart-watch; traditional high-end watchmakers TAG-Heuer have also recently announced plans to make a smart-watch although Jean-Claude Biver, head of watch-making at parent company LVMH, was at pains to point out that their offering would not, of course, be just another copy of the Apple Watch.

Apple have also made it clear that they are serious about building sales in China. Their turnover in the region has increased by 22% in nine months, compared to just 5% for sales generally. This fact may well have influenced their choice of Liu Wen, who is a popular role-model to many young consumers in China, as the face of the Apple Watch in its worldwide debut, and also in their decision to feature it in a Chinese magazine, rather than an American or European edition.

One challenge for the Californian company’s latest creation does seem clear, however: the majority of consumers under the age of thirty - a key target market for this type of product - do not wear a wrist-watch. They have grown up peeking at their iPhone (other mobile communication devices are available!) when they want to check the time, so the idea of having to buy, lug around and keep charged-up yet another piece of kit which only duplicates some of the functions that their mobile phone already gives them may possibly not be a big turn-on to some. And, from the point of view of being a desirable fashion accessory, as many of the lukewarm reviews given to it by fashion editors at its launch bear witness, it’s not exactly so hot that it’s going to be the to-die-for item next season...or is it? What does seem certain is that this will be only the first offering in a line of products designed to catapult Apple from being a purely computers-and-phones manufacturer into a premier league player in the fashion business…and if their previous success is anything to go by, that’s got be worth keeping an eye on, especially if you’re the competition. Either way, whatever you think of Apple’s first major foray into the world of fashion, lifestyle and luxury…please, just don’t call it an iWatch.