Leadership

Ilona (Foyer) Kalina – President

Ms. Kalina is the co-founder and President of FastFit360. Following a successful career in investment banking in her native country of Canada, Ilona moved to the United States and became a “serial entrepreneur” in 1997. Her work is underpinned by a strong management history — Ilona was one of the first female bank managers at the Royal Bank of Canada — and more than a decade’s worth of experience in the fashion industry.

One of Ilona’s first projects as an entrepreneur was the well-regarded Shapely Shadow, which sought to apply technologies from the world of entertainment to the fashion industry. Shapely Shadow used laser scanning techniques pioneered in Hollywood to duplicate fit models as unique, three-dimensional dress forms. The company’s clients included Liz Claiborne and a host of other world-renowned brands from across the apparel industry.

During her time as President of Shapely Shadow, Ilona recognized a shift in the landscape of American industry – from manufacturing to software – and sought to apply her 10 years’ worth of apparel expertise to a new challenge. In 2009, Ilona joined FastFit360, one of the first software developers dedicated solely to the needs of the global fashion industry. Originally created to allow designers and garment technicians to share 360-degree garment images and streamline product creation, under Ilona’s leadership FastFit360 has since become the design collaboration tool of choice for retailers and brands like Macy’s, Li & Fung, and Ralph Lauren.

Ilona, alongside co-founder Roxy Starr, retains day-to-day operational responsibility for finance, business development and management at FastFit360.

 

Roxy Kalina Starr – Executive Vice President, Design and Development

Ms. Starr is the co-founder and Executive Vice President of Design and Development for FastFit360. Her childhood in Malibu was spent immersed in the entertainment industry, under the mentorship of an Emmy award-winning director. This experience led Roxy to recognize that, whatever the medium, images are the most resonant form of communication — and this ethos has informed her work ever since.

Roxy was instrumental in the work of Los Angeles-based Shapely Shadow, which sought to apply technologies and sensibilities from the world of entertainment to the fashion industry. Shapely Shadow adopted laser scanning techniques pioneered in Hollywood to create custom dress forms for some of the world’s highest-profile brands.

In 2004, with an increasing number of brands moving their manufacturing processes offshore to cut costs, Roxy identified a further opportunity to adapt her visual expertise to the needs of the fashion industry. The savings derived from working internationally were, for many brands, being outweighed by the new costs of shipping garment samples from one continent to another. Teams on opposite sides of the world had begun to share images rather than physical samples, but the quality of these varied wildly.

Roxy saw the need for an accurate, consistent way for multinational teams to collaborate on the design and creation of garments, and FastFit360 was born. Initially the software allowed designers and garment technicians to share and annotate 360-degree images of their samples, but in 2009 Roxy spearheaded its development into the cloud-based, social platform it is today.