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EPISODE 127 FEATURES PAUL DILLINGER

Philosophy! The Internet of Things! Irvin Penn! From not being Mozart to designing outfits for The Muppets, as a kid... It's all up for discussion in this week's ep with Levi's Vice President of Global Product Innovation, Paul Dillinger. 

Paul drove Levi's Jacquard collaboration with Google, so of course we talk about that, and the future of tech innovation in fashion particularly around wearables. So of course we talk about that. But fundamentally, this is a conversation about why we wear what we wear, what fashion means and how we've used it across time to craft our identities. Oh, and sustainability.

NOTES

THE LANGUAGE OF FASHION by Roland Barthes delves into the semiotic power of fashion and clothing.

SEMIOTICS is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning is communicated. also Also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behaviour. It was defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.” Although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English philosopher John Locke, the idea of semiotics as an interdisciplinary field of study emerged only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the independent work of Saussure and of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Via Encyclopedia Brittanica

IRVING PENN photographed his Small Trades series 1950-51 in Paris, London, and New York, after being given an assignment by Vogue to to photograph workers in Paris. It grew into a massive work of more than 200 images of skilled tradespeople dressed in their work clothes and carrying the tools of their respective trades. According to Pentagram, Penn knew that many of these trades would eventually disappear. Looking back on some of these occupations, such as coal heavers and chimney sweeps, for example; we see a moment in time, a history, but also their dignity and humanity.

LEVI’S TRUCKER JACKET “Introduced in 1962 as Lot Number 557, the Levi's® denim jacket was assigned Lot Number 70505 in 1967 to match what would be its companion piece, the new 505 zipper fly jean. Jack Lucier designed the jacket, sketching it out on a note pad. (Fun fact: Jack's father, Chris Lucier, is the creator of our iconic red Tab!)” Via Levistrauss.com

WHAT IS AMBIENT COMPUTING? In a nutshell,  it refers to technologies that allow people to use a computer without realising they’re doing it. Read on!

MOUNTAIN VIEW is Google’s HQ in California.

GOOGLE JACQUARD Levi’s® Trucker Jacket uses Jacquard by Google technology. A Jacquard Tag wirelessly connects your Trucker jacket to your smartphone. It uses touch gestures, like swiping and tapping, on the left cuff of the jacket to issue commands.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS. Say… whaaat? “The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data. Thanks to the arrival of super-cheap computer chips and the ubiquity of wireless networks, it's possible to turn anything, from something as small as a pill to something as big as an aeroplane, into a part of the IoT. Connecting up all these different objects and adding sensors to them adds a level of digital intelligence to devices that would be otherwise dumb, enabling them to communicate real-time data without involving a human being. The Internet of Things is making the fabric of the world around us more smarter and more responsive, merging the digital and physical universes.” Via Znet. Read the rest here.

This SAINT LAURENT BACKPACK was partner 2 for Jacquard by Google.

ADIDAS GMR uses Jacquard in “a smart shoe insole”. More in The Verge.

MARIA MCCLAY is head of fashion at Google. Read about the Google project Clare mentions with Stella McCartney here.

GOOGLE GLASS didn’t fly. See here. But Paul says that’s the wrong way to look at it. He sees it as, “a tremendous opportunity to learn, that perhaps people don’t shop sunglasses at the Google store. Perhaps people want to go to Ray-ban…the idea is the thing must lead…Wearability is modifying the word technology - a tech-enabled object of fashion, that’s what we want to go for. Not an added gadget or gimmick, but simply the investing of digital value in a thing that already exists within the fashion space.”

E-WASTE is a big problem. INFO HERE.

ENHANCED ABILITIES rather then built-in device obsolescence is the way forward.

FASHION WASTE continues to spin us all out. Here’s Paul speaking at the CFS:

Paul mentions William McDonough’s book CRADLE TO CRADLE - listen to Bill on the podcast here.

The MOZART movie they talk about is this one:

Here’s MISS PIGGY. That’s all!

MUSIC is by Montaigne, who sang this special acoustic version of “Because I love You” from her album Glorious Heights, just for us.

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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x