Five Minutes With: Matthew Drinkwater
REWIND speaks to Matthew Drinkwater, Head of Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion.
“Five Minutes With” is a regular feature that gives you an insight into some of the greatest minds in the immersive industry, all within the time it takes to grab a cup of coffee.
Matthew is the Head of Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion and a world-renowned expert in emerging technologies and their application to the creative industries. A specialist in immersive technologies, he and his team are building pathways for a truly digitized world. Named as a “fashion-tech trailblazer” by Drapers and a “pioneer and a visionary” by Wired, Matthew has delivered groundbreaking experiences and a stunning range of projects that have captured the imagination of both the fashion and technology industries, including what Forbes described as ‘the first example of truly beautiful wearable tech’. He was also named as a “Digital Worlds Influencer” by Stylus for 2020.
What is exciting you the most about the immersive industry right now?
The most exciting thing that has happened over the past eight months is the acceptance of immersive as a medium for communication. There’s always been a huge amount of interest in the work that myself and the team at London College of Fashion do, but I think the fashion industry was always slightly sceptical of using digital as a medium to communicate. For a long time, the industry has falsely equated digital with a dilution of quality, but the past eight months have proven that’s not the case and forced experimentation with the technology which is really exciting.
How has the pandemic impacted your agency?
It seems strange to say that it has been an incredibly positive thing for us. We have never been so busy! Scepticism, or reluctance to engage in digital, for many luxury brands, was long-standing before the pandemic, so when stores closed and catalogues couldn’t exist physically, suddenly there was a realisation that brands just had to engage with digital content. The massive acceleration in the adoption of immersive technology that we were hoping to see in the years ahead has been sped up enormously by the pandemic.
What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
Find something that you love. It’s taken me quite a long time of jumping between different roles to land in something that gives me satisfaction on a day-to-day basis, to relax and know that everything’s going to be alright. I think if you have a belief in what you want to do and a vision of where you want to go, you can achieve all of those things.
I also wouldn’t have listened to my careers advisor at school! I always had a massive interest in the arts, but I was told that history was my best subject and to pursue that. This was one of those lessons where I needed to know what was right for me.
When you decide what you want to do, follow your heart, follow your beliefs, and don’t let people push you into doing something just because financially, culturally, or socially that might be the best thing to do.
What and/or who is your source of inspiration?
Oh, that’s a tough one! There’s a lot of people that I draw inspiration from. I lost my father this year and he was always a massive part of my life. When we were younger, he was a hugely powerful, quite intimidating figure at times, but was someone that I always looked up to. He did so much international travel that I wanted to have that kind of jet setting career, which is weird because that’s what I started to turn into.
Apart from my Dad, I would say, rather than a person, I find inspiration from a place — Japan. I ended up living and working in Japan from the late 90s through to 2010 and it became an inspiration for me. It connected with me very personally and it was always a really exciting place to be for me working in innovation. I was supposed to go back in April with my eldest daughter, and of course, we couldn’t go due to the pandemic. I haven’t been back for a couple of years and it feels too long! The country is so beautiful, the food is amazing, and it’s like a second home. I think all of us have realised during lockdown what is important to us, where we need to spend time, and who we want to spend time with.
What has been your biggest business challenge in the past 12 months?
There are five of us on the team at London College of Fashion and we’ve been overwhelmed with requests to create digital content and produce virtual shows. They take a lot of time and effort to produce, so we’ve had to lean massively on our partnerships within the technology and fashion industries to come together and deliver.
I think that brands could have been more prepared for what was coming. The need for more digital content, more interactive, and more immersive content was there before COVID hit, but it has accelerated brands towards embracing it.
We have to keep thinking about the future and not just respond to a situation that’s happening now. We need to keep thinking about where the industry is going to go next.
And some just for fun!
If you could have any other job in the world, what would it be?
Oh, that’s easy. If I wasn’t doing this, I would be working for Lucasfilm creating the next generation of Star Wars movies. And if I wasn’t doing that, then I’d probably be managing Chelsea Football Club…but I think I would be sacked very quickly from that role, so we’ll go with working for Lucasfilm!
What technology from a science fiction movie would you most like to have?
I’d have to go with a Star Trek one. The holodeck from Star Trek Next Generation is one of those things that I’ve experienced to a certain extent, through my work in the past. But, having a fully immersive Holodeck experience in my own home that I could step into (particularly during the pandemic) would be really cool.
What are some things you’ve had to unlearn?
A lot of the things around working practice. I think we knew that we would have to work differently this year, but that desire to be together and feeling like the only way that you could work creatively is together as a team, is still something I’m missing massively.
However, I have realised very quickly that we can alter the way that we work, the way that we engage with other partners across projects, and still deliver projects to just as high quality. Prior to the pandemic, that is something I would have been sceptical about. I think it is a massive achievement for not just us, but for everybody that has had to go through and adapt to this way of living. It will be one of those things that we’ll look back on and realise that we’re all capable of dealing with a lot more than we actually imagined and it’s a testament to how resilient everyone’s had to be.
I’ve also had to unlearn every single routine that I was used to, from just stepping out the door in the morning to getting on a train.
What are you reading right now?
I’m just about to pick up Sinéad Burke’s new book called Break The Mould. It’s a book aimed at children, but I think it has lessons for us all. It’s full of inspiring examples of people who have challenged the status quo and changed the world.
I met Sinéad at a fashion conference a few years back. Sometimes you’re at conferences and you hear speakers talking onstage and you’re looking around the room to catch someone’s eye and react to what they’re saying. Sinéad and I went to this conference about three years in a row and literally every year she would be there, we’d be listening to some speakers on the stage and would glance across the room, catch each other’s eye and say “Wow!”. It’s a friendship that was born out of that, and we’ve remained in touch ever since. It’s been incredible to see what a career she has, the impact she’s having across the industry, and how she’s getting people to discuss the topic of accessibility more often.
XRLO: eXtended Reality Lowdown is brought to you by REWIND, an immersive design and innovation company. If you want to talk tech, ideas, and the future, get in touch here.
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