When we watch a Fashion Show on TV,  we just marvel at the style, the elegance and the creativity of the collection.  The amount of work that it took to create it is not the first thing that springs to mind. However when the end comes and the designer bows to the audience, you need to know that this man/woman doesn’t just draw pieces of garment on a piece of paper.  He/she is involved in every step of the creation process – collection, business, show. And I can tell you, this catwalk is not a walk in the park!

Now stylists can go a step further in their creativity thanks to 3D and virtual worlds. Through the recent launch of FashionLab.

What is FashionLab?

It is not a brand, nor a product, but an innovative approach defined as a “technology incubator”. I am already imagining the question-mark appearing above your head right now… You are asking yourself: “what is a technology incubator”?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a biological incubator, like a chemical pipe used to grow and maintain biological cultures!!

It is a business incubator. Like a business program or start-up, it is meant to accelerate the successful development of 3D technology and virtual worlds for the Fashion designers. The goal is to provide the stylists with 3D design, virtual simulation and collaboration tools required to create an entire collection.  This program name was chosen to symbolize the fusion between the fashion designers’ artistic creativity and Dassault Systèmes engineers’ inventiveness.

3 Fashion ambassadors are working closely with the engineers and R&D

Fashion is moving fast, trends are changing all the time and designers have to stay up to date! Stylists always have to make things faster and better. And they need innovative tools to help them bring their ideas to life.

For that matter, FashionLab is working with 3 ambassadors:

• Julien Fournié, founder of the couture house that bears his name, is the ambassador of FashionLab for haute couture.

• Jonathan Riss, artistic director of the JAY AHR House, is the ambassador for haute joaillerie, accessories, embroideries and ready-to-wear.

• François Quentin, a designer of complex luxury watches and founder of 4N, is the haute watchmaking ambassador.

These luxury fashion designers believe that 3D tools can propel fashion to new heights. FashionLab will provide the fashion world with new breakthrough technologies never seen before on the market. Those technologies will improve stylists’ competitive advantage as well as it will build the future of the luxury goods market.

Designers will be given a complete set of tools to create an entire collection. FashionLab will bring them closer to their customers, enabling them to share their knowledge through social networks. And most of all, FashionLab will help them imagine tomorrow’s fashion world. Better and faster.

To Take a Turn on the Catwalk: www.3ds.com/fashionlab

What is seducing a designer to use 100% digital equipment to documenting and developing ideas?

Capturing creativity is a sensual act with decisions taken within micro seconds. Nothing must disturb the magic moment when the ideas flow from brain to the documentation support. For centuries or even back to the stone age designers have relayed on a pencil and a box of color crayons to serve the purpose of documenting their design intent.

I recall the mid ‘90s when I visited at the Opel/GM development center in Rüsselsheim, Germany, for a business project. Open space offices were hung with impressive hand-made sketches and drawings of vehicles on transparent paper, thus manifesting the team’s creative outbursts.

Now a new generation of designers has been raised who are drawing directly on computer screens. And they seem to prefer this approach as their natural way to go about their job. In addition, with a digital input there are some advantages on the down-stream processes: the possibility of applying changes, the effectiveness of re-use and transfer to other media, as well as the ease of enriching content, such as varying colors, further detailing  or adding background for presentations up until photo-realistic rendering.

At the Dassault Systèmes European Customer Conference which took place two weeks ago in Paris we were able to observe what seems to be a breakthrough in this path of development towards a comprehensive approach: Designers now can use CATIA with a pen and tablet device from WACOM to directly draw in 3D.

WACOM has been a partner in our Emerging Technologies Program since last year and has been working with the teams from CATIA and the Design Studio to develop this integrated solution.

With the availability of this functionality the door opens to a closed digital loop from documenting the first idea to developing a product design which is ready to be manufactured.

This sounds like science fiction to you? It still does it to me. But it’s nevertheless real. Have a look at the video:

Listen to the 3D drawing experience of Julien Fournier, who is using this technology to design Haute Couture:

Up to the creative people of the world to check this out.

Best,
Michael

Remember Big Frog, the French Challenge at the Reno National Air Races?

The Reno National Air Races are the fastest races in the world. Aircrafts compete in breathtaking races 50 ft above the ground, driven by the famous motto: “Go fast, fly low, turn left!”

An american specialty, the only foreign victory ever was French: Michel Detroyat way back in 1936 on a Caudron with a Renault engine.

Big Frog wanted to follow Detroyat’s track, with an extra-challenge: use a diesel-cycle engine!

A candidate of choice for the Passion for Innovation Program, which welcomed the Team, providing them with CATIA, SIMULIA and Dassault Systèmes experts’ support. Read the full story here.

For their first participation in Reno this year, the Team established on wednesday a whole set of World Premières :

- first diesel-powered racer designed and simulated on computer (with our CATIA and SIMULIA solutions)

- first diesel-powered aircraft to succed in qualifying at the Reno National Air Races

- and above all, first diesel-powered aircraft victory and in his first race!

This first victory rewards the skills, involvement and passion of the whole Team and the excellence of French technologies, including our 3D design and simulation solutions, the SMA innovative diesel-cycle aero-engine and the perfect intergration of all those elements in the NXT airframe thanks to the Passion for Innovation Program.

Last but not least, congratulations to the pilot, French Air Force Captain Christophe Delbos. Usually a Mirage 2000 fighter pilot, “Bobos” (his official pilot nickname) made a perfect race. Diving on the first pylon like an eagle, he grabbed the race first position right from the start and kept it during the race six laps! According to him, the aircraft went quite well, allowing him to fully concentrate on clean trajectories until he heard the “Race finished” announcement in his helmet.

Once a curiosity after his qualification, Big Frog is now one of the stars of those 2011 Reno Air Races. No doubt Michel Detroyat would be proud of his successors.

Gentlemen, you have a victory! May it be the first one of a long collection!

Keep 3D-ing,
Rich