From teaching herself to code as a teen to creating THE tech tool for fashion bloggers, this girl's got it down.
Words: Elizabeth Keifer
Original Publication: TeenVogue
If you Google the phrase "fashion technologist," the first couple hits are about actually fabricating the clothes that designers dream up. But Chloé Watts, a London-based web developer, is slowly but surely taking over the term—and she's changing the face of the fashion blogosphere in the process.
"When people think of a technologist," she tells us, "they don't think of them being creative. I was always into fashion, but I'm a web developer, which to me means I have the technological skills to create what I want." Tech on its own was never enough for Chloé, who started coding her own projects—without any formal training—at the age of 16. And it's only been up from there.
Chloé is the brilliant mind behind chloédigital, a full-service strategy, support, and technology provider to top-of-the-line fashion bloggers. At 25, she's becoming widely known in the best-dressed circles—not just for her notable style chops, but for her ability to close the tech-creative gap and come up with development solutions for the fashion elite. In London, she shares, that gap runs wide. "When you go to events, there are people from the fashion industry who are really glam, and then there are the super geeky tech guys. They see me and they ask, 'So what are you, fashion or technology?' And I'll say, 'I'm actually both.' Their jaws drop to the floor: They think I can't possibly be any good if I look the way I do." Chloé isn't just proving them wrong—she's doing so with flying (on-trend) colors.
Growing up in England, she and her girlfriends were into style and art. She remembers stopping after school to pick up mags like Teen Vogue, Elle, and Grazia, and paging through them together. "I was into that," she says, "it's just that afterward I'd go home and code a website. I didn't know what I was doing was weird, or geeky." Chloé taught herself to code through trial and error, when she was in high school. "Eventually, from doing it over and over again, I got to where I am now." Coding was something she enjoyed, but that doesn't mean it was easy: She was self-taught at a time when there weren't many self-teaching tools available.
In addition to being super techy, she was also business-minded from an early age. Along with her girlfriends, Chloé decided to launch an online shop selling lipsticks they were buying on eBay. When she couldn't get anyone to build the site at a price she could afford, she made up her mind to just do it herself. "That was actually the very beginning. I thought: Why don't I just teach myself how to make this shop?" She launched the online store—but at the time she had no idea where her newfound tech skills would take her.
First Chloé pitched a small print agency that made the menus and flyers for takeout restaurants, and convinced them that they should hire her to create online menus. "I thought I was on my way to being a millionaire!" she recalls. But it was more than her first job: It was the place where she gained the confidence to negotiate with men over her service rates, a skill that would become essential later in her career.
Later, Chloé landed at a big agency responsible for building websites. "I went from being the only developer to being one of hundred developers," she says of the culture shock. Still, she was an anomaly: There were only a handful of other women on the tech team, and she was the only person under 25. She earned the nickname "creative developer" because of how often she would get called in to explain to the creative teams how their concepts worked from a technical perspective.
During that time, she continued to keep one foot planted in the fashion world, attending events and making blogger connections. It was clear to her that there was an opening for someone who could both communicate with non-tech people and support fashion sites. "There was a gap for fashion bloggers who needed help, and there was no one there to help them," she says. So when the big agency she was working for downsized its staff and cut her loose, Chloé decided to take it as a sign. "I was so happy, because I knew I wasn't supposed to be there. I was supposed to start my own business. That was my kick."
She called her company chloédigital. "It embodies me taking in the digital world," she says. And from the very beginning, she was approached to speak at events about women in technology. "I'm sure it's not normal," she says, laughing, "but nearly every month I was being invited to talk, and every single talk I did got this emotional response." Young girls were suddenly telling her that, after seeing her speak, they were more interested in pursuing their technology interests. Her message? "When you understand the technology yourself, you are ultimately empowered to do what you want to do."
Another one she's come to embody: If your dream job doesn't exist yet, create it. "I like business and fashion and technology because really, for me, my ultimate goal is to empower millennial women through technology, and show them that they can make whatever they want to make with the tech's help."
A year ago, Chloé was invited to Dallas by web company RewardStyle to present one of her products, The Feed, to the blogger community. "It was the most complicated this I've ever coded in my life," she says. She was nervous about going to a new city in another country and addressing a room full of fashion elite about something she was still in the process of building (she continued to code late into the night, before the event!). "I never thought my skills would be that great, so launching it was amazing. I got to get up in front of all these different bloggers, and it opened me up to a new American market."
The Feed is fast-becoming bloggers' go-to tool for mobile sites—but that doesn't mean Chloé's done yet. Right now, she's in the process of building another blogger site maintenance tool, one that would change the way they deal with their back-end and give them access to a technology support system. Eventually, that platform will become the core service offering of chloédigital. "The plan," she says, "is that all the top-tier bloggers will be powered by us."
In case you couldn't tell, Chloé dreams big—and then she makes those dreams come true. "There are so many possibilities out there," she says. "It's not about what you know; it's about what you don't know. Never be short-sighted in what you want to achieve—just know you want to achieve something great. Keep going." As for where Chloé's going next, we'll have to just wait and see. But you can bet it's somewhere no one has thought of yet, and on her own terms.
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Are you as inspired by Chloé's career as we are? Have any questions for her about coding, or starting a business, or anything else? Leave them in the comments below and we'll get back!
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