From fashioninnovationweek.com
The Innovation Meets Fashion event, pinnacle of Fashion Innovation Week 2018, attracted over 1,000 attendees from 27 countries, and from the fields of fashion, technology, investment, the media, and more, to the LAC Lugano on Monday 26th March.
The event was opened by Alessandro Marrarosa, President of NetComm Suisse Association. “We are uniting leaders in the digital and fashion sectors in one mission”, he told the audience: “To make Lugano the European hub for digital innovation in fashion.”
Marco Borradori, Mayor of Lugano, welcomed all attendees on behalf of the city. “The meta-sector of fashion has an important position in imparting positive effects on the economic growth of Canton Ticino”, he said. “Making Lugano one of the most important places in Europe in the field of digital innovation in the fashion industry is an ambitious but achievable project.”
“To do this is essential that institutions put all the necessary tools in place to facilitate this development”, he added. “The city of Lugano has been active for some time promoting the knowledge and connections of the various participants actively contributing to expanding and strengthening the network of the fashion system in Ticino.”
General Director of NetComm Suisse Carlo Terreni noted Ticino’s particularly advantageous position between Milan and Zurich, and the extraordinary growth of the e-Commerce sector in recent years, before prizes for innovation were awarded to Giuseppe Miroglio, Chairman of Miroglio Group, Marco Palmieri of Piquadro, and Adriano Aere, President of Imperial S.p.a.
In the morning’s keynote addresses Marc Walder of digitalswitzerland presented his perspective on the effects of the global digital transformation, drawing on his own experience in the media. Thomas D. Meyer, Senior Country Managing Director at Accenture presented how the company is helping to drive the digital transformation in fashion, while Markus Wyss, Client Partner Tax & Legal at KPMG, explained how fashion and innovation could achieve the blessing of the Swiss regulatory system.
There followed an event for which many in the audience had been waiting in great anticipation – the announcement of the winners of the Fashion Innovation Award, as decided by the expert jury on Saturday evening. Newstore, EyeFitU, Arylla and RealLook had most impressed the jury, and took home the prizes.
Following lunch, and a chance for the attendees to network, the extensive programme of speeches and panels divided across four rooms from companies as diverse as Google, Facebook, Accenture Interactive, Keros, the USI, Swiss Post, Moschino, VF Group, the Fashion Technology Accelerator and Investindustrial – to name but a few.
In the evening, a VIP apéro saw one final award for the week: an exclusive catwalk fashion show, with Swiss designers: De Marquet, Old Captain Co., Filardo, Nicole del Fante, Onyva, Mluna, Charles Mueller, Balseca Weber. They showed their collections to an expert jury composed by store managers of Luganos fashion boutiques: Nadja Balmelli-Bagnoli: Boutique Manger di Cartier, Nico Bonardi: Store Manager di Tiziana Fausti, Tanya, Rozhkova: Store Manager di Brunello Cucinelli, Matteo Andreoletti: Store Manager di BLU Boutique, Francesco Di Somma: Store Manager di AIMO Room, Nadia Zoller: Store Manger di Borbonese. The prize for the best designer was presented by Jastina Doreen Riederer, Miss Switzerland 2018. The winner who won 5’000 Swiss Francs sponsored by eShopworld was Balseca Weber.