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Christian L Harris

Founder / Sr. Technical Designer

CLH Consulting / Nike

https://www.christianlharris.com/

Speaker Biography

My fashion & technology journey began in grad school. There, I used CAD tools to streamline my work to create avant-garde runway looks. My graduate thesis work was featured by WWD, Elle and Esquire. Weeks after finishing my MFA, I was in Barcelona and then Istanbul troubleshooting the CAD pattern department for one of Turkey’s largest manufacturers of cut and sew knitwear. A year later, I joined Gerber Technology’s software product management team. Between the beginning of grad school and joining the team at Gerber, I also taught as an adjunct professor, interned full-time at Marchesa for five months and led pattern development for a start-up womenswear label in New York. My greatest achievement in that period was managing to sleep a few times. I joined Gerber in August 2015 to fill the newly created position of Product Owner and Evangelist of AccuMark 3D. AccuMark 3D is a 3D pattern design tool launched in May of 2015. In less than two years I was given the title of Product Manager. In those roles, I traveled to over 40 cities in 15 countries to provide customer support, sales support, training, and product demonstrations. I worked with brands and firms of all sizes as they took on digital transformation projects. I used insight from these customer visits to create actionable enhancement requests, specifications, and user stories for engineers based in California, Connecticut, Texas, New York, and Slovakia. I vacated my position at Gerber in 2019 but remain a 3D pattern design thought leader. As my career flows along, Global Garment Engineering (GGE) remains a constant. Dr. Pat Trautman is the owner and operator of GGE. She was my graduate professor, my thesis chair, and remains a valued mentor. Together, we offer concierge services and training to the apparel and film industries. In 2017, I collaborated with Gerber and GGE to produce premium replicas of original costumes worn by Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Zendaya and others in The Greatest Showman. Another opportunity to integrate fashion and technology, we created production patterns from physical garments using CAD systems. With GGE, I moved on to complete similar projects for Bohemian Rhapsody, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and BRIDGERTON.