Dr. Amanda Parkes is a fashion technologist with over 15 years of experience in wearable technology, interaction design, smart materials and fashion innovation. She is the Chief Innovation Officer of new fashion startup, PANGAIA, a material science brand and collective building a sustainable future in lifestyle products. She is also the Chief Innovation Officer of Future Tech Lab, a hybrid investment fund, agency and experimental lab focused on the future of sustainable and interactive fashion. Her perspective focuses on combining smart textiles, wearable tech, fiber science, material science, and nanotechnology with the strategic development issues around building hybrid fashion-technology businesses.

She is the former Chief of Technology and Research at Manufacture NY and the Founder of BuildFashion, a fashion tech studio working with startups including Thesis Couture, Dropel Fabrics, Kenzen, Mycoworks and Wonderwoof, and with past clients including Google, Intel, and Ringly. As an academic, she is appointed as a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and an Adjunct Professor in the Columbia University Department of Architecture.

She received a PhD & M.S. in Tangible Media from the MIT Media Lab and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (Product Design) and a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University. She is an international speaker & lecturer, including TED, DLD, CES, PSFK, the World Economic Forum and the New York Times International Luxury Conference; her design work has been awarded in forums including the ID Magazine Annual Design Review, the Prix Ars Electronica, and the D&AD Awards. She was named to the Business of Fashion 500 People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry, Vanity Fair’s 8 Wildest Women of Silicon Valley and as one of Alleywatch’s 10 Most Influential People in Fashion Technology.

 

Topics:

  • As the Chief Innovation Officer of the innovative and buzzy fashion brand PANGAIA, Amanda Parkes has developed several new and up and coming initiatives for PANGAIA in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels and unsustainable materials within the fashion industry. In this session, Amanda discusses the science behind this sustainable journey for fashion innovation spanning research, development, and product commercialization. 'If carbon is the new black, humility is the new green.'

  • Amanda takes us on a whirlwind journey through some of the latest advances and projects in Wearable Computing. The newest companies are rethinking the very nature of technology. For instance, instead of sewing a battery into a garment, they're making garments that can generate their own power. New technology looks more like fashionable jewelry than like a computer.

  • Greenwashing is the clever disguise companies use to claim sustainability without actually doing anything, and the fashion industry is one of the worst offenders. PANGAIA's Fashion scientist, Dr. Amanda Parkes, is on a mission to fix the industry's problems with both unsustainable processes and the lack of information keeping Greenwashing around. She argues for the need for government support for scientific innovation, and better access for all to the technology that will enable this through funding support.

Twitter: @amandajparkes

Instagram: @amandaparkes