Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Fashion vs. Tech

I work in the fashion industry and am always excited when I can make direct connections between my love of fashion and what we are learning at CBS. So, imagine my joy when I stumbled upon an article in a recent New York Times that specifically discusses the emergence of the "fashionable woman" in Silicon Valley. You can check the article out here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/fashion/in-silicon-valley-showing-off-their-louboutins.html?pagewanted=all

I guess I never really thought about it, because fashion is quite central in the lives of most New Yorkers (whether they know it or not!), but Silicon Valley and tech in general really is a pretty laid back culture. Though, in recent years, a number of chic, powerful woman have certainly challenged that norm. Case and point: Yahoo's Marissa Mayer and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg. And I hope they keep pushing! The article goes on to talk about how women in the tech industry used to feel that they wouldn't be taken seriously if they dressed up or experimented with their wardrobe choices, or that people wouldn't think that they were smart, but that things are now changing. Personally, I love a girl in a Prada dress and stiletto who can talk bytes and keyword searches!

The article also discusses how fashion design and computer programming are like-minded processes (which I this is a fabulous analogy). Here is one of my favorite parts of the piece, which sums that point up:

“Designing software and products isn’t all that different from the design of clothes,” Ms. Mayer, 37, the new chief executive of Yahoo, said in an interview last February. She once paid $60,000 at an auction for lunch with Oscar de la Renta. “Like components of software,” she said, “fashion designers learned how to do this shoulder, put pleats on the skirt that way.

This was a fun read!

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