One more sleep until the first day of SxSW 2015! We’re excited to be part of the amazing conferences and festivals highlighting today’s emerging tech. Speaking of, we had a chance to speak with founder of fashion tech magazine Third Wave Fashion, Liza Kindred.
Third Wave Fashion is not only a fashion tech wearable magazine, but a place for entrepreneurs to learn how to break into the the wearable tech market and partnerships between luxury fashion brands and fashion tech startups bloom. In our interview with Kindred she touches upon the future of print magazines, sexism in tech and her prediction on the next big fashion tech trend.
Tell us about your role at Third Wave Fashion and your background.
Liza Kindred (LK): I’m the founder of Third Wave Fashion, which is a fashion tech think tank, and the Editor-in-Chief of Third Wave Magazine, the first ever fashion tech print magazine. Third Wave Fashion works with big fashion and technology brands to navigate the rapidly changing fashion tech space. We’ve been around since 2011; as far as I know, we were the first agency-style company that focused solely on fashion tech, although a lot of people have followed suit.
I’m also the author of two upcoming books, one about the future of commerce (How We Buy Now, O’Reilly, 2015), and co-author of a book about designing for wearable tech and connected devices. I speak and write widely about fashion tech, wearable tech, and the future of commerce.I’m one of the very few people who has worked both in fashion and in tech.
My first business was a clothing boutique, and I worked as a fashion editor of a small newspaper, as runway producer and as stylist, among other things. After that, I was the managing partner of an open source software company for many years, and I helped grow that company from two guys to a multi-million dollar company. About five years ago, I felt like it was time to bring what I’d learned in technology back into fashion, so I sold my shares in that company and started Third Wave Fashion.
Tell us about Third Wave Fashion and how you came about conceptualizing it.
LK: Fashion has traditionally been very behind in technology, but in the past 5 years, that has changed rapidly. As someone who’d been working in open source software, I not only had knowledge that I felt could be valuable, but really specific ideas about the ways that technology can be utilized that I wanted to share with the world. We started out working directly with fashion tech startups (and still keep a database of about 2,000 of them), but over the years, we have moved to working with large brands and publishers instead.At first, I thought we would make the biggest difference by guiding small companies, but as those small companies multiplied and continued to open, pivot, close, and open again, I felt like a focus on helping put context into the fashion tech world would have a bigger impact. My background in both worlds gives me the ability to give a lot of perspective that gets lost in the sea of hyperbole and buzz.
Third Wave Fashion recently released their first print edition. We’re living in an age where print is going digital, but you’re digital going print. What made you decide to go against the grain and go print instead of sticking to just digital content?
LK: I have a deep love of magazines. While they are changing drastically, they won’t ever disappear entirely–the same as brick and mortar stores. We’d been publishing monthly fashion tech reports internally for about a year and a half, and got really great feedback on them from our clients, but wanted to reach a bigger audience. Our magazine is a beautiful quarterly print edition of these reports, with all original editorial and writing. We’re so excited for them.
When was the last time you looked at the masthead of a magazine? They are HUGE. Some of our clients are traditional publishers, and some of those are in serious contraction mode. It’s incredibly hard to support those kind of payrolls. We have a great opportunity: we know we can publish something really high quality with a very small team. We’ve been creating content together for years, so it only takes a few really great people to make something amazing. My main partners are the husband/wife team The Great Wilhog; their combined talents in writing, photography, and creative direction are what makes the magazine really shine.
You tweeted once, “Every single time I post something about #sexism in tech, I end up having to block trolls who jump on the hashtag just to insult me.” According to The Guardian, Microsoft and Google’s tech departments consists of 17% women. Why do you believe this male-skew exists in tech? How can we encourage more women to work in this growing field?
LK: Ugh. I wish this wasn’t true, but it is. In the decade that I’ve been working in tech, it’s gotten steadily worse–not better. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that a huge part of the answer lies with men. Men need to start calling each other out, and not standing idly by while blatant or insidious sexism takes place. This is a problem that affects all of us, so it’s going to take all of us to fix it. Guys: please educate yourself about sexism in tech, and call out other men for it. It’s so common; we have to work together to eradicate it.
All of us need to call BS when we see an event or panel that’s all white men. Diversity of all kinds is better for all us–age, race, gender, and all of the rest. I don’t always have the energy to call it out, so sometimes I quietly submit things to 100 Percent Men–it’s a Tumblr of screenshots of things that don’t even have a token woman. It’s infuriating, but it’s my favorite kind of activism: presenting something without comment and letting people draw their own conclusions.
The fashion industry, although appeals more to women than men, is also prone to sexism when it comes to the business side with women more in creative roles and men in business leading roles. According to studies, only about 1.7% of women hold CEO positions in the retail industry and out of the top 17 modeling agencies, only four are led by women. With tech and fashion coming together, how do you think both industries can help eliminate sexism?
LK: I don’t know what the answers are, but I do have some things that I personally do to try to combat this. My friend J Kelly Hoey is an inspiration when it comes to this; I try to take a page from her book and promote the hell out of the smart women I know. I always seek diversity in the panels I sit on (I do a lot of speaking), and I’m hyper-conscious about diversity in my writing and lectures. I do call people out publicly sometimes (see that Tweet you referenced above), but I do something else that feels even harder: I tell people to their faces, that their lack of diversity bothers me. I tell event organizers that ask to hire me, potential business partners, and companies that send me press pitches. I am nice about it–I am not interested in burning bridges, I am interesting in building them.
I’ve been known to say, “I went on your team page, and I noticed that the only women on your team are in marketing and admin positions. I have a huge network of amazing women I’d love to help you tap into the next time you’re hiring!” I want to help. I use humor. I try to make my differences on a human scale.
What is your next fashion trend prediction, and will it feature wearable technology?
LK: We are currently following three main trends: fashion merging with technology, content merging with commerce, and online merging with offline. Additionally, I’m very interested in how new business models (I cover 21 of them in my book) will allow for the new technologies to be adopted.
Here’s an example: Right now, if you sell handbags, you make money when someone buys your bag, and you hope that later they’ll buy something else from you. But what if your handbag has a technology that allows the design to be updated, like an E Ink screen or programmable LEDs? Then, you could not only sell handbags, you could sell subscriptions to your handbags. As a brand, you could push out custom colors, patterns, or designs of many types. The entire meaning of having the “most current handbag” changes, and the brand can continue to interact with customers while generating ongoing revenue. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. Isn’t this stuff so exciting?!
Jessica Moy is the Managing Editor at FASHIONOTES. She loves the latest in fashion/beauty innovation and finding the best online shopping deals (maybe a little too much).
