By Tomas Smith – production process specialist at Sewport

ColorSnap

Whenever you need to get more information on a color you see on a garment, accessory, or bolt of fabric, reach for your smartphone and load ColorSnap. This Sherwin-Williams iOS and Android app allows you to instantly identify any color that you see on the runway or in the office, and ColorSnap will even suggest matching colors that would go great with any garment that you fall in love with. Best of all, this app is 100 percent free.

Pinterest

Sewport CEO Boris Hodakel suggests that you think of Pinterest as your mobile mood board. It’s easy to make your own collections with this intuitive app, but you can also rely on the groups of images that other Pinterest users have collected to provide you with inspiration for your next garment or line. Pinterest is free to use, and it’s one of the most useful tools for collecting images that strike a chord with your aesthetic sensibilities.

Stylebook

Stylebook is an incredibly useful app that no fashion designer should be without. This app allows you to upload images of garments that you can add to your “Closet.” You can then organize these garments into “Looks,” and Stylebook even allows you to edit your garments and load them into a monthly calendar. While Stylebook costs $3.99, the value of this app is readily apparent if you’re the type of person who is constantly juggling different fashions and figuring out which garments look best together.

Instagram

If you haven’t downloaded the Instagram app onto your Android or iOS smartphone yet, you’re behind the times. Not only does Instagram provide you with an ideal format for browsing fashions and connecting with consumers, but you can also sell your fashions directly through this app’s intuitive storefront.

STYLEBOP

STYLEBOP for iOS allows you to keep track of the latest fashions that are sweeping the industry. Whether you want to derive inspirations from the best styles of the season or browse through your favorite designer’s latest handbags, STYLEBOP is an app that you won’t want to be without.

Women’s Wear Daily

Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) has long been the go-to platform for fashion designers who want to stay on top of the latest happenings in the fashion world. Whether you decide to subscribe to the print or online edition of WWD, you’ll receive free access to this platform’s iOS and Android apps. Print subscriptions cost $169.99 per year and digital subscriptions cost $129.99 per year.

Trendstop

Trendstop is like WWD but without the price tag. A subscription to this app only costs $5.99 per year, but it comes fully packed with features that you’ll love like fashion news and catwalk videos. Trendstop features robust sharing options, and this app makes it easy to keep up with all of the world’s most prestigious fashion shows with the touch of a button.

Silk Knots

Silk Knots is an app that you might never need, but you’ll be happy that this handy tool is on your smartphone if you ever need to show off your scarf-tying skills in front of an audience. This Hermes app features tons of intuitive info on the best ways to tie scarves around a model’s head, neck, or chest.

Vogue Runway

Vogue Runway is an up-to-date app that’s streamlined for the latest mobile devices. It contains all of the information you’ll need to keep track of all of this season’s fashion shows whether they’re taking place in Paris, Milan, London, New York, or elsewhere. This app is available in both iPad and iPhone versions.

Evernote

Evernote might not immediately strike you as a fashion app, but as soon as you touch this app’s iconic elephant head icon, you’ll fall in love with Evernote’s simplicity and multi-platform compatibility. This app allows you to seamlessly weave text, images, and videos together into intuitive files and folders. All of your info is then saved to the cloud so you can access it from any device.

The post 10 Best Fashion Smartphone Apps appeared first on Tech Trends.

With the launch of its new fashion marketplace, Linden Lab wants to attract more users to Sansar.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum. In October I was impressed by the quality of the scary and atmospheric experiences they showcased in a Halloween competition that I helped to judge, while only last week they also opened the virtual doors of their Hollywood Museum to showcase some exclusive Star Wars movie memorabilia.

While still in public Beta, Sansar does seem to be gathering some momentum
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Marvelous Designer is a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments
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Now Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing. It will be powered by integration with Marvelous Designer sofware, which is widely used in the film and games industry to create digital clothing. It can virtually replicate fabric textures and physical properties to the last button, fold, and accessory, which is pretty important if people are actually going to start spending money to kit up their avatars and spending more time in social VR platforms like Sansar.

Linden Lab has announced it is launching a fashion market for user-created avatar clothing
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Users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars
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Marvelous Designer is a product of CLO Virtual Fashion a 3D fashion design tool used by numerous mainstream brands and independent designers to visualize true-to-life 3D garments. CLO can be used to express a variety of design details for every type of garments from simple T-shirts to complex outerwear, and Sansar users will now be able to play around with those realistic cloth simulation as they customize the fit and style on their avatars.

“Our experience operating Second Life has shown how important and valuable user-created avatar fashions are, and with Sansar, we’re taking it to an exciting new level,” says Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab. “Our integration with Marvelous Designer means that not only can you change what you wear, you can customize the fit and style to adjust how you wear it in Sansar. For example, you can roll up your sleeves, loosen your collar, and arrange your scarf just as you like it.”

For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity
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Linden Lab says that this opens up new creative and entrepreneurial opportunities for users. For designers, Sansar’s fashion market could prove to be a tangible business opportunity, if Second Life (SL) is anything to go by. Over the past 15 years, SL users have created nearly two billion virtual objects, and avatar fashions account for a major portion of the $500 million (USD) user-to-user economy, and some designers have earned millions of dollars from their virtual fashion businesses.

“Innovative fashion companies, world-leading film and gaming studios, and creative hobbyists around the world are already using Marvelous Designer to create incredible virtual clothing designs,” said Jaden Oh, CEO & CTO at CLO. “Our integration with Sansar is the first of its kind, and it makes it easy for our users to sell their creations in this new market.”

New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer
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New and existing Sansar users can currently get a 60-day free trial of Marvelous Designer, and Linden Lab is clearly hoping that this move will not only help kick-start Sansar’s in-world economy, but also increase user take-up and engagement by allowing them to customize their avatars in creative ways. Fashion is a major part of how humans convey individuality and personality IRL, and the same applies in virtual reality.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Time to Dress to Impress—in Social VR #Sansar via @alicebonasio https://t.co/HoAPe4lSki pic.twitter.com/CqZh6U3e0A

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 28, 2017

Tech Trends offers comprehensive Virtual Reality Consultancy services to support businesses looking to adopt VR/AR/MR technologies into their brand and communications strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Dressing Up Social Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

I never really had a problem with traditional headphones until recently, when I started listening to music on my phone much more often (blame Amazon’s 80s radio) and dropped my handset several times by getting the cable tangled.

I never really had a problem with traditional headphones until recently
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If Apple has its way, we soon won't have any choice but to use Bluetooth
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So I thought it was time to give the latest generation of Bluetooth headsets a try, especially since – if Apple’s latest release is anything to go by – we soon won’t have much of a choice. Unless you want to try out this clever hack, that is*

Don't try this hilarious hack at home
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Ashley Chloe is Fashion Tech start-up base in San Francisco that makes fashionable wearables, and the Helix Cuff is their first flagship product. It’s a Bluetooth headset that slots into a magnetic bracelet, providing a sleek and stylish way of carrying your headphones around. When not in use, the connecting cord wraps into a groove in the wrist cuff, while the headphones go into a little cache covered by a mirror-polished stainless steel cap and the wireless receiver slots onto the other side. It takes a few tries to get the hang of it, but once you do it’s a matter of seconds to tuck away your headset in the cuff.

The Helix Cuff is a Bluetooth headset that slots into a magnetic bracelet
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“Fundamentally, the marriage of fashion and functional design to create a storage element for headphones simply didn’t exist,” said Mika Nenonen, chief designer of the Helix Cuff.

To tackle that problem, Founder and CEO Angela Pan assembled a team of top designers and engineers from Nokia, Google/Nest, and GoPro, and launched a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstaster. They raised 250% of the funding goal (over $260,000) from 2000 backers in 150 countries, and in September this year launched a consumer version of the Helix Cuff.

The Helix Cuff raised over 250% of its funding target on Kickstarter
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Their award-winning design is unisex and comes in various colours and finishes (white, black and bright red with metal embellishments in 18K plated-gold, champagne gold, or silver aluminium). It retails for $199  –  or $299 for the gold-plated edition.

The Helix allows you to connect up to two devices simultaneously, so that you can, for example, listen to streaming media content on your laptop or tablet while still being able to take hands-free calls on your phone. The battery on the headset lasts around 3 hours in use, and 200 hours in standby.

You can listen to music on your laptop or tablet and switch seamlessly to taking calls on your mobile.
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The headset worked brilliantly with older phones
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But as cool as it is to test-drive the latest fashion wearables straight from San Francisco (yes I love my job, although it doesn’t quite make me want to dance around in the street like the protagonists of this video), what really sells this to me is the fact that my in-laws – both in their 60s and not easily impressed by gadgets – ended up “stealing” it. The headset worked really well with both their phones – which weren’t exactly the latest models – and they loved the fact that they could listen to their music, audiobooks and radio plays without being tangled in endless cables.

Their only criticism was that the cord for the headphones was a bit too short, but I explained that this was probably because it’s designed to keep the microphone relatively close to your mouth. I then reassured them that it was unlikely that microphone would be used to spy on them (but, then again…) They are most definitely not Siri users (and to be honest neither am I) but for fans of that sort of thing the Helix Cuff is voice-command enabled.

Here are some of the key features and technical specs. It does come with full instructions of course, although I flatter myself that I didn’t quite need all of those…

• Bluetooth 4.1 powered by CSR and Qualcomm chipset.
• Up to 30 feet working distance.
• aptX® technology: provides CD-like high-quality stereo audio.
• Smart multipoint connectivity: simultaneous paired with two devices, i.e. stream music from the laptop/tablet, and take calls from the smartphone. Memorize up to 8 devices at a time.
• cVc® noise reduction technology: increase voice quality, reduce background noise.
• Powerful speakers:
  • Frequency response: 50Hz-20kHz
  • Impedance: 16 ohms
  • Total harmonic distortion (THD): <1%
• Battery life: up to 3 hours

*DON’T actually try this hack, it’s a prank in case you haven’t figured that one out.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Product Review: Helix Cuff appeared first on Tech Trends.