Looking Back at the First Fashion Tech Blogging Conference in Paris 2005

Looking back over the years, I"m thinking back to the launch of 360Fashion Network and how I worked with Loic LeMeur who was with Six Apart at the time, Xavier des Horts from Nokia, and how it has lead me to where I am today of producing some of the biggest fashion technology events in the world. 

Breezing back through google and remembering also the bloggers that I started such as Diane Pernet, Imran Amed, Erin Fetherston, and more, I knew at the time that blogging would evolve into the standard of the web because it empowered people to have their own voice.

Loic LeMeur's blogpost about the first fashion blogging conference in Paris, France 2005.

Here is the list of the first fashion bloggers on the radar in Paris, France 2005.

Some promotion of the first fashion blogger conference and launch of 360Fashion Network.

At the time, I asked all my friends to start blogging: one photographer (Sonny Vandevelde), one journalist (Diane Pernet), one business person (Imran Amed), one model (Anina Net), one hairstylist (Patrice Delaroche), and more....and they agreed simply to help me as I had this plan to use my name and image to influence women to enter into the world of technology and get fashion tech going with more brands using technology (which they didn't want to at the time such as Marco Laconte points out at my event in New York at the time!).

 

For the event I had 3 areas: one area that was an installation where I explained in a physical format what is a blog. I had each person in the 360Fashion Network choose 10 photos, a quote, and a physical object to support the explanation--plus I had printed out the blogs so that people could actually SEE what was a blog.

 

Then I had a great interactive cocktail area where I had a huge metal net on the wall where I asked people to take photos, have them printed out wirelessly, and then write a physical blog post on a card that looked like the inside of a blog, and pin it to the net wall (effectively making a physical blog post).

By the end of the conference, the wall was full of photos and physical objects, and blog posts. It was a fun exercise to help people understand what was a blog.

 

(I wish I could find that photo of the panel discussion)

After the cocktail and the exhibition we started the conference and had over 50 people join us from both tech and fashion. You may recognise some of the regular suspects but it was fun to have the 360Fashion bloggers share their experience and explain why they were blogging, and what they thought of it/how it was helping them connect to the world. The other interesting fact you may like to know is that they were all blogging from their mobile phones--which I had to configure at the time from scratch every time they went to a new country, and it took me 2 hours to get the smtp server info from the operators (who instead wanted to sell me a mms package, but I had to insist to give me the gateway so that I could send photos, text and video directly to the Six Apart Typepad blogs). At the time, Nokia were the first ever to be able to LifeBlog.

At the time, I didn't realize that I would be creating the blueprint for my 700 square meter exhibitions I do in China with 110,000 people, or fashion and wearable tech runway shows with exhibitions and 500+ C-Level attendees at the IBM-360Fashion & Tech "Startup Runway & Innovation Awards". Yet looking back as I see my wikipedia page, I see that this was indeed the beginning of the fashion tech movement that I've been in for 8 years and that it was always a love of mine to use Art and Media to explain technology. What a super fun trip down flickr's memory lane. Funny how it was on October 3rd, and my events are all on the 3rd of the month...Please have a look at the first fashion tech blogging conference photos here: