secret messages.
There was a megaton of Twitter secret-messaging going on at the Futurist Congress, but almost all of it was in Portuguese. The Italians were much too busy respecting their Italian philosopher. They hung on his every empty word.
The Italian philosopher wound it up. The French fashion designer was the next to speak. He left his transparent stackable chair, and turned on the big screen with a click of his thumb.
He spoke to the crowd in Italian. An amazing feat for a French guy. Normally, the French assumed that every decent person in the world spoke French.
This French businessman was very lucid and clear. He’d come to Capri with a solid, practical agenda. He was well-rehearsed. He even directly addressed the topic of the LOXY panel: why Europeans would shop for their clothes on the Web of the future.
His detailed PowerPoint presentation highlighted the Web’s advantages for a major fashion house. Market segmentation. Reduced inventory. Integration of production with demand. Customer relations management. The change in user generations.
The children of the Baby Boomers were coming onto the fashion scene and the Web was their way of life. The Digital Natives had never known a world without a Web. They loved the Web. They were its slaves.
Micro-targeted promotion campaigns. Outreach to markets in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Gulf States. Web-savvy Moslem women in Iran could shop for sexy lingerie while never leaving Moslem seclusion.
Gavin sat up in his front-row chair. This was the kind of presentation he really liked: real, red-meat, commercial Futurism.
The French businessman sensed that he was on a roll. Paris had the Milanese reeling. And then he brought out his killer application: high-tech, French augmented reality. Réalité augmentée! Yes! Oui! Si! French women could use augmented reality to model imaginary, cyber-generated clothes. With augmented reality, the fashion house could take the client’s exact proportions (no matter how she lied about her body), and tailor clothing precisely for her. She would be able to see how imaginary clothes, on her own body, in any color, any fabric, and the fashion would never cut a stitch of real cloth until she had ordered and paid.
The French designer displayed his imaginary cyber-clothing. Gavin switched into the Twitter backchannel to see the audience response.
Not too great. The Italians were getting nasty. Spoken Italian tended to whip by Gavin, but he could read Italian just fine. My grandma’s dog wouldn’t be caught dead in that. // Those are cheap rubber clothes for computer-game figures. // It’s like set design for the Smurfs .
The Parisian gentleman was sweating it now, but he then brought out the big finish. The “Carla Effect.”
Carla Bruni . There she was. A virtual Carla Bruni! A golden video of the willowy songbird, strolling around — no, Carla was sauntering, gliding — up on the larger-than-life display screen. Carla Bruni, in her Paris-tailored get-up as the First Lady of France.
Mr. Paris had cold facts and figures on what happened to French exports whenever Premiere Dame Carla Bruni dismounted from a French jet. Fashion earthquakes occurred when Carla alighted upon some primitive, backward locale, say, London. The French called that the “Carla Effect.” And the “Carla Effect” could be measured in euros, dollars, and pounds. For the first time in history, a First Lady’s charm could be monetized.
Mr. Paris had recovered his aplomb. The Italian audience adored Carla Bruni, because Carla Bruni was, in fact, Italian. She was Italian, and French by marriage, and her dad was Brazilian. The Carla Effect promised the future!
Then he sat down to the panel’s only round of applause.
Fabio Mascherati summed up the panel’s remarks, looking cool and crisp. Fabio’s LOXY was a Web retail company, based in Milan, that sold posh Milanese clothes. Fabio, therefore, had practical and informative things to say about
There was a megaton of Twitter secret-messaging going on at the Futurist Congress, but almost all of it was in Portuguese. The Italians were much too busy respecting their Italian philosopher. They hung on his every empty word.
The Italian philosopher wound it up. The French fashion designer was the next to speak. He left his transparent stackable chair, and turned on the big screen with a click of his thumb.
He spoke to the crowd in Italian. An amazing feat for a French guy. Normally, the French assumed that every decent person in the world spoke French.
This French businessman was very lucid and clear. He’d come to Capri with a solid, practical agenda. He was well-rehearsed. He even directly addressed the topic of the LOXY panel: why Europeans would shop for their clothes on the Web of the future.
His detailed PowerPoint presentation highlighted the Web’s advantages for a major fashion house. Market segmentation. Reduced inventory. Integration of production with demand. Customer relations management. The change in user generations.
The children of the Baby Boomers were coming onto the fashion scene and the Web was their way of life. The Digital Natives had never known a world without a Web. They loved the Web. They were its slaves.
Micro-targeted promotion campaigns. Outreach to markets in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Gulf States. Web-savvy Moslem women in Iran could shop for sexy lingerie while never leaving Moslem seclusion.
Gavin sat up in his front-row chair. This was the kind of presentation he really liked: real, red-meat, commercial Futurism.
The French businessman sensed that he was on a roll. Paris had the Milanese reeling. And then he brought out his killer application: high-tech, French augmented reality. Réalité augmentée! Yes! Oui! Si! French women could use augmented reality to model imaginary, cyber-generated clothes. With augmented reality, the fashion house could take the client’s exact proportions (no matter how she lied about her body), and tailor clothing precisely for her. She would be able to see how imaginary clothes, on her own body, in any color, any fabric, and the fashion would never cut a stitch of real cloth until she had ordered and paid.
The French designer displayed his imaginary cyber-clothing. Gavin switched into the Twitter backchannel to see the audience response.
Not too great. The Italians were getting nasty. Spoken Italian tended to whip by Gavin, but he could read Italian just fine. My grandma’s dog wouldn’t be caught dead in that. // Those are cheap rubber clothes for computer-game figures. // It’s like set design for the Smurfs .
The Parisian gentleman was sweating it now, but he then brought out the big finish. The “Carla Effect.”
Carla Bruni . There she was. A virtual Carla Bruni! A golden video of the willowy songbird, strolling around — no, Carla was sauntering, gliding — up on the larger-than-life display screen. Carla Bruni, in her Paris-tailored get-up as the First Lady of France.
Mr. Paris had cold facts and figures on what happened to French exports whenever Premiere Dame Carla Bruni dismounted from a French jet. Fashion earthquakes occurred when Carla alighted upon some primitive, backward locale, say, London. The French called that the “Carla Effect.” And the “Carla Effect” could be measured in euros, dollars, and pounds. For the first time in history, a First Lady’s charm could be monetized.
Mr. Paris had recovered his aplomb. The Italian audience adored Carla Bruni, because Carla Bruni was, in fact, Italian. She was Italian, and French by marriage, and her dad was Brazilian. The Carla Effect promised the future!
Then he sat down to the panel’s only round of applause.
Fabio Mascherati summed up the panel’s remarks, looking cool and crisp. Fabio’s LOXY was a Web retail company, based in Milan, that sold posh Milanese clothes. Fabio, therefore, had practical and informative things to say about
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