Google + H&M = Next Fashion Powerhouse?

Affinity Offers Pandora For Fashion

Always on the cutting edge, fashion retail giant H&M has teamed up with Google for its next clothing design launch.

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    This time, H&M has thrown a twist into the design mix process. Its digital fashion house, Ivyrevel, has formed a partnership with Google for a new development project called “Coded Couture.”

    Through this new fashion endeavor, H&M has put together a DIY system to help an app design a dress through the use of the search giant’s Awareness API technology. Launched just last year at Google’s I/O developer conference, this technology enables applications to learn a person’s daily activities, locations, nearby shops and weather patterns for the area.

    In utilizing this, H&M developed a way to design a dress adapting to the person’s unique daily activities. Through a yet-to-be-launched application, Android users will be able to download an app that will utilize both Google’s Awareness API and its Snapshot API, which will track every move for a solid week.

    At the beginning of the process, the user tells the application what type of event the dress is needed for. Then, after seven days have passed, the application will take into consideration several factors, including daily travel routes, activities and weather, to put together a dress design that can be ordered and shipped to the user’s doorstep.

    Some are questioning if this is the best use of Google’s Awareness API technology when it has previously partnered with Trulia, Runkeeper and Superplayer Music. While the path of this particular use case is not certain, it’s definitely a move in an interesting fashion direction.

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    Given the fact that more and more industries are becoming automated and fashion designs are still mostly done by humans, this announcement opens the doors for more tech-infused clothing of the future.