👗 Bella Hadid’s Spray Paint Dress Turns Into Real Fabric (amazing video).

Welcome to The Level Ups. Modern business news for the future business leader (explained in plain-Jane English).

Today:

• Bella Hadid’s runway show features a fantastic spray paint dress that forms into actual fabric.

• How does this work, and who’s behind it?

• The creepiest marketing campaign is also an amazing marketing stunt.

Let’s get into it.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes & 1 second.

Sprayed On, Altered, and She’s Walking in 2min.

They’re using a liquid fibre that doesn’t stick to your skin and forms into a fabric that feels like suede. Wild.

Here’s it is:

Don’t have two min? Here’s the final result.

The Company Behind it:

The technology was created in 2003 by Fabrican. Wired also covered it again in 2010.

Dr. Manel Torres (the founder of Fabrican) imagined “a material that would magically fit the body like a second skin yet have the appearance of clothing.” Looks like mission accomplished to me.

But, 40% of America’s population is obese, so I don’t know how good a “second skin” will look on everyone who’s not Bella Hadid. Jokes aside, still remarkable.

Why did it take so long to go viral? Because it's Bella Hadid on the runway. Much more of a viral moment than nerds playing with spray paint in a garage, let’s be honest.

The Possibilities:

There are many other applications. Here’s a rundown:

• Fashion - of course.

• Design - the tech can create furniture, decorations, and unique finishings.

• Healthcare - dressings, casts, bandages, and more.

• Consumer products - cleaning cloths, sponges, hygiene products.

• Manufacturing - car interiors, patching oil spills, etc.

Note: the liquid form of the polymer can be infused with scents and textured for many more possibilities.

The Advantages:

There are a few obvious benefits to this technology. To name a few:

• No need to farm animals for the hides.

• Save big money and time on shipping fabrics/garments across the world.

• Creative freedom to upgrade your personal outfits

• Patch up garments to make them last longer.

What about the cons to all this? People will have to be trained to use the technology. Labour costs will go up, right? Wrong.

If robots can make coffee, why can’t they spray dresses? It turns out they can.

Fabrican is training an AI on the same autonomous robot arm that makes coffee to do all the work. Here’s an early shot from their website on the development:

Guess that means humans will only be designing the dresses, right?

Wrong again (kind of). Today humans are designing, but tomorrow… who knows. One person created 50 unique outfits with AI in 5min (and they look good).

The Future:

• AI will design hundreds of dresses. Some will sell in stores. Others will be custom ordered.

• Humans will flip through hundreds of options on a screen and pick one.

• Robots will spray it to life right on your body before you go out.

That’s the distant future (10 years). The near future will probably involve a fashion show with rows of models who do precisely what Bella did, all at once.

Scary and exciting. What a time to be alive!

What’s the creepiest smile you’ve ever seen?

For me, it’s this (and it’s my new favourite marketing stunt):

This is one of many paid actors who attended sold-out games and just stood there with that creepy smile. Here are a few others:

Imagine paying for a ticket to sit next to that all game.

It’s all a marketing stunt to promote the new Smile movie.

Why do I love it?

• It’s impossible to ignore once you see it live (like Bella and the spray paint dress).

• So many people posted these creepy smiles. Tons of marketing impressions for the price compared to the cost of the tickets.

• They didn’t make it obvious that it was for a movie. They just look like crazy people. It’s like reverse psychology: the “aha” moment of finding out after that’s what it was about.

Keep it in mind the next time you are working on marketing.

That’s all for today.

Thanks for reading!

See you tomorrow,

Darwin