You may have noticed last evening (November 30) that there was a flurry of activity around the hashtag #fashionlab. Among the many things happening in Manhattan at the same time – President Obama was in town with the First Lady and they were at events all over city including the lighting of a certain Christmas Tree – the one event with what will likely be the longest term consequences took place in a small but beautifully appointed atelier on the Upper West Side. That event was the launch of FashionLab, Dassault Systémes platform for supporting the fashion industry.

I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation alongside Renee Hopkins, the Editor in Chief of Collaborative Innovation. We had an excellent evening viewing the wonderful artistic work of Jonathan Riss, the Artistic Director of the JAY AHR fashion house, as well as hearing Jerome Bergeret, the Director of FashionLab for Dassault Systémes, as he launched this venture. Riss’s work covers haute couture, jewelry and large scale embroidery art pieces each of which benefits from the FashioLab platform.

FashionLab enables Riss to work with a far-flung network of artisans in order to bring his creations to life, including a village in China renowned for its extraordinary embroidery work. It enables him to collaborate with vendors, suppliers and customers in a unique way by employing state-of-the art 3D design tools and online workspaces. All of which means vastly reduced times in transit for face-to-face conversations so that Riss’s artistic intent is understood clearly. Now, that clarity can be brought about swiftly via

Bergeret, in his opening statement, highlighted the work of JAY AHR and the other fashion labels (Julien Fournié and François Quentin) who are partnering with Dassault Systémes on this launch. He noted that the merger of the artistic know-how of the designers combined with the engineering creativity embedded within and across FashionLab delivers a platform to tackle all aspects of the fashion creation process. From concept and ideation, to virtual show room back design and eventual point of sale, FashionLab aims to create an integrated and solution-oriented approach to collection development and delivery.

By pushing their technology in new directions to serve new market sectors, Dassault Systémes also earns the right to innovate itself learning from this experience and bring that to bear across their entire product suite. Based on what I observed last evening, there is a huge opportunity to unleash creativity in this space. Fashion, predominantly a solitary pursuit from a design perspective, now has a platform to open up to ever-wider collaborative opportunities. The results are likely to surprise and delight in the very near future.