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how IBM will bring the catwalk into your living room - changing the face of fashion and retail

Thanks to Shenlei for the link — this is amazing!

NMC Campus Observer » New Weekly Events- Join Metanomics Events on NMC Campus

from sl.nmc.org

China and Virtual Worlds: The Competition Gets Stiffer

Have a look at this article from the Guardian from just last month, “Virtual China Looks For Real Benefits.”

China is converting a 100 sq km site (yes, that is a very big space) on the former nationalised steel mill site to house, among other things, virtual worlds able to support not millions or tens of millions but billions of avatars.

and

If it were anyone but China planning this you would take it with a pinch of salt. But this is not the NHS, it is the world’s biggest manufacturing country pitching to lead the next stage of development as the internet moves into three dimensions. When I asked the professor whether the coming of virtual worlds would be on a scale commensurate with the industrial revolution, he replied: “It will be faster, bigger, more like an explosion.”

SUNY PROJECT LIVE @ MCC

Daily News Clips

Saturday, December 8, 2007

First phase of SUNY Second Life experiment ends on high note 
Rochester City Newspaper
Monroe Community College and Finger Lakes Community College kicked off a SUNY-wide experiment in the use of virtual worlds in college education. They established a beachhead in Second Life, held a one-day conference, and offered plots of land for educators to play with. More than 30 SUNY institutions and RIT took Larry Dugan (coordinator of learning environments at FLCC) and Terry Keys (director of instructional technologies for MCC) up on the offer to innovate.

Prim & Proper’s winter runway show: Jewels of Winter

The Fashion Research Institute, Inc, is pleased to present Prim & Proper’s winter runway show, Jewels of Winter, on Monday, December 17th, at 11 am slt.  
 

Produced by the Next-Cor Agency, the runway show will be held in IBM’s 4-sim theater, Kearney Theater, at the junctions of IBM, IBM 1, IBM 6 and IBM 7. 
 
We invite you to join us for a morning  in a winter wonderland in the IBM sims, and as usual, great gifts, courtesy of Prim & Proper.
 
Theater in IBM

Theater in IBM 1
http://slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%201/10/16/24
Theater in IBM 6

About Prim & Proper:
 
Prim & Proper has been presenting fine ladies and men’s wear since November, 2005.  It is now the premiere Victorian clothier on the grid, with a deep emphasis placed on accuracy, hand drawn textures, and professionally developed swatches and prints.  With more than 30 years as a couture costumer and as a real life fashion designer, Shenlei Flasheart continues to focus on her  love of 19th century fashion.   Each piece is drawn from an extent garment, fashion illustration, or accessory and is period accurate to silhouette, color, and type(s) of material.  The Prim & Proper line includes day wear, evening attire, bridal wear, outerwear, and a range of accessories including animated fans, boas, jewelry, millinery, gloves, ice skates and shoes.  The men’s wear line, The Proper Gentleman, offers finely crafted accessories for the period gentleman with discerning tastes.  The line’s future development includes an extensive Fall collection of sculpti hats for both modern Edwardians and modern Victorians alike. Prim & Proper’s flagship store is located in the nature sims of Shengri La, where Shenlei Flasheart sponsors a weekly pearl oyster dive for pearl-jewelry containing oysters hidden around the islands. Her RL fashion design practice sells to the major mass retailers, including Walmart, where her collections are a substantial commercial success with more than $30MM USD sold for Fall 2007.  She is the founder and CEO of the Fashion Research Institute, Inc., which owns the Shengri La island complex.
 

About the Fashion Research Institute:

Fashion Research Institute (FRI) conducts research into technology-based initiatives and develops emerging technologies to sweepingly overhaul traditional fashion industry practices and methodologies. FRI’s mission is to reduce the carbon footprint and change the environmental impact of the industry in ways that are sustainable, replicable, respectful of the practitioners, and meaningful for all stakeholders. Some of FRI’s projects include inventing new, improved forms of lyocell textiles from waste biomass generated from biofuels production; inventing a virtual world-based design methodology; and inventing a new anti-counterfeiting methodology for luxury fashion products. For more information: http://www.fashionresearchinstitute.com

Nyla Kazakoff : Virtual Brand Building

A few years ago I imagined the possibilities of a 3D room attached to my website. The opportunity for clients to view a design from all angles , work through the design process, and also be able to produce a 3D version of what could be possible. February 2006 I stumble across Second Life, amazed at what I see, I realize this is exactly what I had imagined.
 
I jumped in learning every pertaining aspect of designing and building a virtual business. I opened the doors of House of Nyla virtual boutique June 1st 2006 and was profitable within 2 months. I take digital images of my fashion, rework the images in photoshop onto templates. The templates are loaded into Second Life and become virtual clothing. I set up photo shoots, styling images much like real life, these images become sales boards as well as advertisement campaigns. I have created a group for my fashionista’s within SL , which is an instant mail list. Joining sites like SLme.com and SLprofiles.com allow me to spread the word about what I do much like a MySpace or Facebook. Bloggers review new items giving me just another voice to the masses and there are also a number of fashion magazines like Aspire, that can be used to advertise in.
 
For less the $5 dollars US a week a designer could rent a space big enough to open a virtual boutique. An indispensible tool to not only refine ones vision of style but to learn about Brand building , networking , public relations , trends, statistics right down to a viable product.
 
I use the Second Life 3D platform to display virtual versions of my real life designs. This new virtual voice has garnered me world press for my real life label , viewable at www.houseofnyla.com from Magazines such as German Vogue , National News to being showcased by American Express Open, this is my door to the world.
 
To visit House of Nyla virtual boutique  http://slurl.com/secondlife/Starax/192/117/25/?title=House%20of%20Nyla

Watch the Video!

Click here to watch the video of the presentation of Elaine Polvinen, Nyla Kazakoff and Shenlei Winkler at FIT on December 4th — about the future of fashion design and business in virtual reality (Second Life).

Shenlei Winkler: Virtual Product Development

Virtual Worlds are an emerging technology that promises to sweepingly and dramatically alter the way enterprises of all sorts conduct and do business.  Using lessons learned from Web 2.0, businesses can harness the substantial power of virtual worlds to cut costs, reduce time-to-market, develop better product; maintain transparency all along the supply chain and above all, for fashion designers, maintain the integrity of the designer’s vision throughout the production process.  Initial estimates from technology companies such as IBM suggest that Web 3.0/virtual worlds will be ubiquitous as business tools in as soon as three years. Those individuals who do not learn to use these new tools will find themselves as lost as those who refused to learn to use computers, e-mail or the Internet.   Learning to use virtual worlds is an initial step to being able to teach students to use this new technology.  While virtual worlds can represent an appreciable barrier to some, with proper curriculum, all can access and use the immense power of these collaborative, persistent workspaces.  FRI is working in conjunction with its technology partner, IBM, and with fashion educators such as Elaine Polvinen at Buffalo State, to develop virtual-worlds based fashion curriculum, and to develop seminars for educators to help them access virtual worlds.
 
Prepare yourself! Sign up for an account with a virtual world - I recommend Second Life, because the Second Life interface will be used commonly for emerging virtual worlds and because it is actually a relatively easy interface to learn…and of course, it can be fun to learn, too.  Learn to use the tools. There are many great organizations in Second Life whose sole mission is to assist new residents of the world to use it to its maximum potential.  FRI sponsors space on Shengri La where new residents can come in and orient themselves in a safe, visually lush, fun environment.  I invite you to join us in Shengri La at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shengri%20La/194/32/28

Second Life at FIT, some links and events

SUNY in SL
Some info from Jim Greenberg of SUNY Oneonta:

Tomorrow (December 7) at 8 pm EST, 5 pm SLT the last of SUNY Oneonta’s concerts for the fall term in SL will be held.  This one is a fashion show. Original designs by students in our Fashion program.  Original music by students in Music program. Animations and build done by students in Computer Art and coordination and production done by students in Music Industry. 

And Jim’s comment: In all my years here I have never used a tool (Second Life) so good at allowing for such a cross discipline collaborative effort.

Join us if you can… SLURL:
 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Monroe%20CC%202/43/18/21/

Some Recent News about Fashion and Education in SL
Read about Fashion Research Institute’s PLM solution for virtual reality (a collaboration with IBM) This “specifically addresses the industry’s unique needs, cutting time to market. Designers will be able to access 3-D tools from within SL or Open Sim to create their fashion product. The 3-D models of the design can be shown in a virtual showroom.  Everyone who has a share in the product will be available to review the design: product managers, designers, design directors, merchandizers, costers, executives, sales staff and show room managers.  After the creative vision has been finalized, factory specifications are created that will enable the item to be manufactured in real life.“

“Drawing Clothes and Inspiration from SL to Real Life and Back”

This just aired on CNBC tonight (includes a short interview with a fashion designer in SL making $85,000 this year).

And a brand new article from NBC News, “Professors Learn in Virtual World.”

And here’s an interesting link to an interesting about Virtual Worlds that came in from Sandy Krasovec (thanks Sandy!).

SL at FIT
We are working on posting a video of tuesday’s SL event at FIT that IT kindly made for us. We hope to have that available later this week.

Given the large turnout at FIT for the two presentations about fashion, design and business in Second Life, it is clear FIT faculty are interested and excited about virtual reality. Many faculty emailed or spoke to me afterwards, interested in learning more, getting an avatar in SL, and perhaps teaching something their respective disciplines in Second Life.

I think that the presentations demonstrated how virtual reality will soon be an inevitable part of doing business and socializing in the 21st century. As Nyla said, virtual reality is the next telephone. Great metaphor!

I learned so much listening to our three presenters, who discussed Second Life from three very distinct viewpoints — Shenlei, who has a side business in reproduction Victorian clothing in SL but also has several beautiful islands ideal for collaborating with artists, and business partners. Shenlei is also working on a PLM solution with IBM using virtual worlds to make the design and production process more efficient and more cost effective. Then we had Nyla — who began as a couture designer and opened a business in SL selling both her virtual clothing and her real clothing and has become very successful, and will use the momentum she has built in SL to expand her real-life clothing design business. Then of course, Elaine was able to talk about SL from an educator’s perspective, teaching students how to design clothing, develop a line, and and create runway shows in SL.

What is clear is that there are very few places in the country who are offering curriculum to students in the areas of virtual reality and fashion design, marketing, and building a business and that we at FIT can and should begin to think about how best to do this.

We have a unique opportunity to explore this and to collaborate with our SUNY colleagues who are also exploring SL (though not with FIT’s unique curriculum) — like Buffalo State, Oswego, Monroe Community College and Finger Lakes Community College.

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