When Liz Bacelar, founder of New York based Decoded Fashion, announced that she was leaving the company that she founded back in 2011, many people in the fashion technology space were surprised.
Once the announcement had sunk in, we took a moment to look back at her journey so far. It seems that in a short space of time Bacelar managed to create global events that accelerated innovation at the intersection of fashion and retail. She made a name for herself when she launched Decoded Fashion’s first NYC summit back in 2012 and she became the respected influencer we know today when she held the world’s first fashion hackathon in 2013.
After four years Decoded Fashion managed to grow an impressive community that spanned over 10 countries and produced summits in NYC, London,Milan and Tokyo. It’s success led to the company being acquired by Stylus Media Group back in 2014. They wanted to take Decoded Fashion to the next level by planning to expand its event series in the U.S., Europe, Asia and South America whilst connecting thousands of decision makers and fueling dozens of collaborations between brands and tech companies. On the acquisition, Stylus CEO and Founder Marc Worth said, “Decoded Fashion has quickly become the catalyst for must-attend events and regularly secures guests from the highest ranks of the world of fashion, retail and design. Decoded Fashion has a well-earned credibility amongst the fashion industry for staging events that matter. Stylus Media Group is expected to be an all-seeing source of consumer behaviour, design trends, innovation breakthroughs and business understanding. The synergy between these two companies is clear.”
Following such a big change, Bacelar remained at the helm of Decoded Fashion and the company continued to go from strength to strength. Today the creative founder confessed that her decision was based on the fact that she has “got the itch to move on and start something new”. She is looking forward to creating a new global initiative involving some great names from both Fashion and Technology. Although she would not share further details, she did reveal that she would be also launching a separate venture with her close friend, David Rowan, Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK. FLOW JOURNEYS will be an invitation-only and will be launching in Iceland in September 2016.
We, at FashNerd.com, look forward to seeing what Liz Bacelar comes up with next, because in the words of Beryl Markham “success breeds confidence”, and she has certainly been very successful.
UPDATE: 21 June 2016
Since news of her departure broke, Liz Bacelar has never shared the reasons behind leaving Decoded Fashion, that is until her first interview with Fashion Is Your Business. The podcast with Pavan Bahl, Rob Sanchez and Marc Raco, delves into Bacelar’s departure and the new ventures that she is currently exploring. Listen to the podcast
Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.