Earlier this week I attended a fashion & tech industry mixer organized by SF Fashion + Tech (a San Francisco event planning group) and hosted at Polyvore‘s corporate headquarters. I had a bit of a snafu on the way there (CalTrain issues), but once I made it to Mountain View I immediately ran into my friend Jennifer Henry-Novich of Just Add Glam and from there my night turned into a smashing success.

At one point during the event, three startups, Bombfell (a subscription-based service for fashionably challenged men), Chubbies (a men’s shorts company- for those who hate pants) and Tout (a real-time video sharing platform for 15 second films) each gave a demo to introduce their products to attendees. Otherwise, the event was an open networking meetup.

Throughout the evening I met some wonderful people and had the chance to chat with Polyvore CEO Jess Lee. She’s a very inspiring woman, with a heavy tech background, who’s now impacting the fashion industry with her current venture, Polyvore. Since using Polyvore for both fun and business during the past few years, and having Pretty Innovative recently mentioned on the company blog, I of course had lots of questions for Jess, including finding out her favorite fashion designer. She mentioned Helmut Lang.

If you’re not familiar with Polyvore, I like to think of it as a site that allows users to create digital collages with images grabbed from the web. Many users, like the one below, pay homage to their favorite brands by mixing runway photos with garment photos to create inspiration boards.