Smart fashion: the luxury brands embracing technology

From fibre optic dresses to the hottest watch in the world, tech is finally getting fashionable and luxury brands are at last embracing the possibilities of wearable technology. But will their new special relationship prove to be as smart a move as they think, asks John Arlidge

Richard Nicoll's fibre optic dress stole the show at London Fashion Week 2014

John Arlidge

25 September 2014

Technology is a sober world. The white-walled laboratories of Silicon Valley are full of men with bad hair, bad clothes and boring names like Steve, Dave, Brian and Tony. Rock’n’roll it ain’t. But there was something different about the launch of Apple’s new watch and its two new iPhones at its Cupertino headquarters earlier this month.

‘I’ve just been having a few glasses of champagne with U2,’ grinned Marc Newson, Apple designer Jony Ive’s new right-hand man, as he stepped out into the afternoon sunshine after the Irish band brought the launch to a close with a track from their new album, Songs of Innocence. U2’s lead singer, Bono, joined Newson and Apple’s latest hires: former Burberry boss Angela Ahrendts, now Apple’s head of retail; Paul Deneve, who quit Yves Saint Laurent to take over special projects; and Patrick Pruniaux, former vice president of sales at Tag Heuer, now head of sales. They posed for selfies alongside the newest addition to the family: the Apple Watch.

Dozens of models of the new timepiece, including some in 18-carat gold, were on display in crystal cabinets on a giant white catwalk with a black Apple logo at one end. Glamour had at last come to the land that style forgot.

‘Apple has created a new sector: techno-luxury,’ said Jonathan Newhouse, global boss of Vogue publisher Condé Nast, who had flown from New York to attend the launch, an IWC watch poking out from under his expensive charcoal suit. Would a rich, fancy fella like him wear the new Apple Watch? ‘Sure,’ he replied instantly. ‘These days technology is luxury and luxury is technology.’

After initially shunning new web-based technology for making high-end baubles more ‘common’ and providing an easy avenue for counterfeiters to peddle knock-offs, designers are now rushing to embrace it. The fashion houses know that consumers regard their gadgets as necessary comforts and are spending more and more on them. They are battling to hold on to their share of luxury spend and think wearable tech is the answer. Credit Suisse predicts that in three to five years £18-30 billion a year will be spent on wearables.

Designer labels are combining new world Silicon Valley smarts with traditional luxury to create unique product lines. Every major high-end goods brand now makes iPad and iPhone cases; some, like Aspinal of London, make handbags with built-in battery chargers that can cost up to £5,000 for rare skin editions. Brands are also already developing bespoke accessories, notably straps, for the new Apple Watch, which goes on sale early next year (it will cost around £320 in the UK).

The big brands are also partnering with social networks to sell their products. Burberry fans were able to buy clothes straight from its live-streamed catwalk show at London Fashion Week earlier this month, using a new Buy button on Twitter. Topshop teamed up with Facebook and Instagram to create a ‘social catwalk’. It shared key looks from its Unique London show on Facebook as soon as they had appeared on the catwalk, and six looks from the show were immediately available to buy online; gone are the days when buyers had to wait months before being able to purchase catwalk looks. Marc Jacobs partnered with Beats by Dre headphones (now in the Apple stable) for his ready-to-wear show in New York at which the audience was asked to don headphones to listen to the soundtrack. And technology also found its way into Richard Nicoll’s show in London, which dimmed the lights and opened with a fibre optic dress.

For their part, the technology firms need fashion to put the ‘wear’ into wearables, which, even more than mobile phones, are a form of personal expression. The industry is reaching out for the design-savvy who will help to move the new devices beyond early adopters to the mass market.

Three editions of the Apple Watch

London-based Newson, who also designs clothes and watches for major brands including G-Star, and boutiques for high-end fashion houses, notably Azzedine Alaïa, was chosen by Ive to create its new wearable tech and to warm up Apple’s stores. ‘Fashion is an important part of popular culture and influences what we do on many levels in luxury and technology,’ Newson says.

Ayse Ildeniz, head of New Devices at Intel, which recently unveiled its collaboration with the fashion label Opening Ceremony at New York Fashion Week — a pair of snakeskin smart bracelets with semi-precious stones that receive notifications and send alerts — adds: ‘The fashion industry understands the aesthetic sense, but it is also very much in tune with what a woman would wear on her body.’

So, it’s win-win. Or at least, that’s what both sides hope. But some, with longer memories, are not so sure. They point to the music business. Apple’s iPod, an innovation every bit as disruptive as the Apple Watch, helped Apple to wrest control of the music business from the traditional record labels, forcing once-great names, notably EMI, to the brink of bankruptcy. Could the same thing happen to the luxury goods industry? Could tech eat fashion’s handbag?

If the reaction of fashionistas is anything to go by, the answer is yes. Fashion bosses are normally upbeat about everything shiny and new, especially Apple products, but they have been uncharacteristically downbeat about Apple’s ‘new digital watch’, suggesting they are worried. ‘The problem with wearable technology is, it’s a bit cold,’ Carine Roitfeld, former Vogue Paris editor, now global fashion director at Harper’s Bazaar, told a Tech x Fashion Talk panel discussion during New York Fashion Week on the day the Apple Watch was unveiled.

Stéphane Linder, chief executive of watch brand Tag Heuer, owned by LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods group, dismissed Apple’s new wristwear as ‘not a luxury product. Luxury is about being unique and rare. At $350, it looks more mass market. Luxury is about longevity. A smart watch will be outdated and replaced every year. Luxury is about ease and elegance. There is nothing easy and elegant about carrying around another charger. Oh my God!’

But some analysts think the Apple Watch represents a real threat. ‘Luxury is built on innovation, integrity, intelligence, usefulness, design and elegance,’ says Floriane de Saint Pierre, founder of an executive search firm, which specialises in the luxury sector. ‘All those qualities apply to the Apple watch. If I were sitting in the large fashion houses, especially those that make a lot of money from watches, I would be worried.’

And unlike Google Glass, the Apple Watch looks good (though Diane von Furstenberg’s new Made for Glass range of eyewear for Google, which recently launched on Net-a-Porter at £1,250 a pair, is helping to change that). Critics and retailers praise the watch’s hi-tech curved glass screen, offset by an old-fashioned crown. Others appreciate the customisation. You can change the colour of the strap or style of steel bracelet and create a unique home screen. ‘Personalisation is key,’ says Natalie Massenet, Net-a-porter’s founder and chairman of the British Fashion Council.

The new Apple wristwear is also useful. Users will be able to load their credit cards on to the watch and pay safely for goods simply by holding it to a sensor in a shop or restaurant. When Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, launched this new service, called Apple Pay, he used a video ridiculing an old-fashioned leather wallet full of plastic cards: ‘No need for your wallet any more,’ he said.

That might sound good to you and me but it scares the bejesus out of luxury goods firms. Some of their best-selling and highest margin products are small leather goods with the smallest price tags in the store. ‘And the Apple Watch does not just threaten the wallet and the purse,’ says de Saint Pierre. ‘What happens when someone develops an app that means you can open your front door or your car with your watch? No more fancy leather key rings. And who knows what other apps will emerge and render yet more traditional luxury goods obsolete?’

Made for Glass by Diane von Furstenberg for Google

De Saint Pierre points out that there are some uncanny similarities between the iPod, the iPhone and the Apple Watch. The iPod and the iPhone created far better versions of existing products and swept aside the competition in a heartbeat. Many consumers regard the Apple Watch as not only better than existing smart watches but better than traditional analogue watches, creating the potential for Apple to disrupt a new sector. She dismisses Linder’s suggestion that the watch’s relatively ‘cheap’ price renders it mass-market, not luxury. ‘Nike trainers, the Mini, the Fiat Cinquecento — they are all affordable but they also address the luxury consumer because they are best in their class.’

The risk for luxury goods firms is the same as it was for the traditional record labels: that they are too slow to wake up to the threat new hi-tech products pose and by the time they do, it will be too late. Many industry observers are astonished that even though the launch of the Apple Watch has been trailed for years, no luxury watch maker has even tried to launch a smart watch of its own to compete.

For now, traditional luxury goods firms are holding on to the belief that the Apple Watch will generate interest in wristwear among young consumers, who tend to shun traditional watches, and that, in time, many of those consumers will turn to the traditional luxury watch brands. ‘Anything that gets young people to wear something on their wrist is good for watchmakers,’ says Linder. He — and an awful lot of people in Switzerland — hope he is right.

Smart fashion: the luxury brands embracing technology

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