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Project Description:
“IT Pieces” are design tools that materialize user data in the form of clothing.
In our MVP, the customer logs into our online tool and allows access to their social media activities. The respective data can then be analyzed and processed. As a result, an original design is generated.
Our technologies consist of neural network training, data mining, generative design and automated production processes.
We develop design tools for advertising purposes and merchandising for companies that are proud of their data and want to communicate it to the outside world.
Why Do You Think Your Project is Creative/Innovative?
What if data is the raw material of our creativity? What if a clothing design could adapt according to a precisely calculated target group analysis? This approach is not only exciting for me to challenge my approach to design. In a world that consists of more and more deep learning databases, I find it important to rethink the role of the fashion designer and artist, to make computers more artistic and artists more connected with new technologies. “IT Pieces” is a key project for my company. Due to its commercial character, it brings the necessary financial resources so that further missions can be implemented, such as the development and implementation of artificial intelligence for the fashion industry.
How does Your Project Enhance User/Audience Experience
For us, IT Pieces means responsibility: producing less in a higher quality. We produce in Europe, our raw material comes exclusively from Europe. In this way we guarantee the highest quality of the garments and ensure that craftsmanship remains in Europe: At knitting companies, printing companies, textile manufacturers, weaving mills and spinning mills. As soon as we start exporting to Asia and the USA, we want to adapt our production network accordingly: Find manufacturers in each region. One of the biggest challenges in the current global economic model is constant overproduction. Not only for fashion companies themselves, but also for retailers, it is almost impossible to assess which products and in which quantities will sell well in the coming season. In the area of merchandising, cheaply produced products are distributed en masse and then land directly in the trash. To counteract this, we work with a flexible model. Each piece is only produced when the end customer actually buys or wants it. This means that there is less risk for the shops themselves, and we avoid large warehouses. In merchandising, advertising and image building are more effective: Merchandising only develops its effect when the product is used with pleasure over a long period of time. The challenge in this case is the price in relation to the order quantity: The "mass customization" model will flourish as soon as the order frequency is higher and we can bundle individual orders in production. For a single order, our knitting company charges, for example. € 90 / piece, for orders of 500 or more the same service costs € 54 / piece. We are setting another example with our overarching topic 'personal data’: We are a role model for the positive impact on data usage. We only use the data to generate the design and then let the computer 'forget' it again.
Does Your Project Have Potential Market Application or Value to the Public and Why?
In the market for merchandise clothing, our product fits in particularly well with the data collection trend. With our design idea of using data to design garments interactively, we can offer companies a special marketing tool. Marketing becomes a personal experience for employees and customers. Our potential customers are companies that need to communicate externally, or that are already working with merchandising articles. Another criterion is that the companies are innovative, collect data, are proud of this data and want to make it known. We also define our niche by the fact that we create quality products and are therefore higher in price. From these factors we calculate market potential for financially strong corporates, innovative start-ups and public administration. In sales, our contact person is the Head of Marketing. Our sales strategy results from the topics that the marketing department is looking for: On the one hand, strengthening the company image (highlighting the company's unique selling point, communicating values). On the other hand, there is internal communication, with topics such as mental health, diversity and team success. Athletes and musicians often act as role models for these values. Sports, music, travel, company-relevant conferences and media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and the local media are part of the professional and private interests. Marketing agencies are important intermediaries for sales, and presence at trade fairs and conferences is also necessary. For customer acquisition, we present a sample product, then respond to the customer's communication requests and existing data and develop a tailor-made project. The basis here is the construction of a design tool that creates generatively individual designs, which are then produced as an item of clothing using a technology to be selected. Assuming 200 pieces are required, this project would require a budget of ± € 15,000.
Individual Team Biography
Flora Miranda is an Austrian fashion designer and visual artist based in Antwerp and Vienna.
How has our identity changed with the internet and computers? What if we could send ourselves like an e-mail?
She explores such questions not just through strong storytelling and material experiments. Flora also develops her own software and experiments with technologies like 3D scanning, 3D printing,
laser cutting, machine learning and generative design to rethink the role of the fashion designer today.
For Flora, fashion does not just describe items of clothing, it also includes a whole aesthetic world with which we surround ourselves. That is why she presents her clothes as performative experiences in which music, space and movement become a conceptual part of the clothes.
Flora grew up in a family of artists and musicians, where she developed her skills as a painter. After completing her master's degree in fashion design in 2014 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, she worked as a freelancer for Iris Van Herpen.
Flora Miranda launched her eponymous couture line in 2016 and has been presenting her haute couture collections seasonally in Paris since January 2018. The mission is to bring art and technology into fashion.
Seeing computer programming as a creative tool, her vision is to transform into a creative software company.
She sets the first step into this direction with “IT Pieces”: Garments that are generated based on personal data, as a proposition to a 100% automated pipeline from design to production.
"(...) Flora Miranda's approach examines the future possibilities of fashion, an interdisciplinary artistic basic research: From this she delivers a completely new aesthetic with a surprising visual effect, in the fashion world dominated by quotations she opens up an independent position for herself." Jury members OA Award: Stavros Karelis, Rosario Morabito, Branko Popovic, Patricia Romatét)
2020 - nominee Henry Van De Velde Award, Belgium
2019 - winner Good Design Award, Chicago
2018 - winner Justus Brinckmann
Förderpreis, Hamburg
2017 - winner Rado Starprize, Austria
2016 - winner Outstanding Artist Award
2016 - finalist International Talent Support, Italy
2015 - winner Mittelmoda Award for the use of technology, Italy
2013 - winner Cocodrillo Shoe Award, Belgium
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