Ralph Lauren

As the official outfitter of the USA Olympic team, Ralph Lauren wanted to push innovation for the 2018 Winter Olympics: a heated parka built on conductive inks developed by DuPont.

The hard problem sat between the two companies. Each was entrenched in its own design and manufacturing processes, working within what it did rather than what it could do, and neither had a way to connect — electrically and mechanically, and most importantly conceptually and procedurally — the conductive ink laminated onto the fabric to the battery and the electronics driving it. The whole technical function depended on that one small part.

They needed a connector to make a connector.

I served as that connector, literally and conceptually. Approaching fabric and electronics not as separate units but as a continuum of materials, I designed, tested, and sourced the connectors, and delivered a solution that was easy to implement and slotted cleanly into existing supply chains. The making of the parka is documented in the article “Bringing On the Heat.”