An initial glance at Rachael Bell's résumé might make it tough to understand how she ended up at Microsoft.Bell grew up in Manchester, England, and at 15, talked her way into an internship at a small design shop in London. Afterward, she attended the London College of Fashion, where she fell in love with studying different fabrics. She has no knowledge of hardware or programming. Instead of dealing with wires or number-crunching, Bell honed her skills in tailoring, becoming a textiles expert at fashion companies like Giles Deacon and Paul Smith, where she cut patterns, sewed, and did model fittings.But the head of materials design at Finnish company Nokia saw her potential in a different industry: tech."I was like, 'Why does a computer electronics company want to interview a fashion designer?'" Bell says of getting the call from Nokia. In her previous work in fashion, she says that she didn't have a laptop, or even an email address. Nokia flew her to Helsinki, but she still didn't know what the job was at that point.In fact, Bell, now 30, would become one of the first people to start fusing style into the world of consumer technology. Bell was instrumental in introducing Nokia's signature bright colors to its phones , rather than sticking to silver and black, the tech industry's staple colors. She brought a stylish, tailored approach to its metal phones and tablets, objects that, up to that point, were mostly valued for function rather than form.The switch proved challenging, but exciting. "It opened up a whole new area of consumer electronics that I didn't even know existed," Bell says.Products at the intersection of fashion and tech have increased exponentially since then, creating a new category of previously nonexistent jobs. You don't have to know how to code to break big. "Whatever your talent or area of expertise, it can probably be relevant in the tech industry," Bell says. Big companies, such as Microsoft, need and want people in a wide variety of diverse disciplines.The intersection of the two fields is most apparent in the wearables world (with lines such as Tory Burch x Fitbit and Opening Ceremony x Intel ), and on the runway ( Zac Posen x Google ). While it may be harder to view an iPhone or a laptop as something stylish, even Apple and Samsung have started taking cues from the fashion world when it comes to product color offerings (we're looking at you, rose gold).Now the lead textiles and materials designer at Microsoft (which took over Nokia Devices and Services in 2014), Bell has returned to her fabric roots, crafting beautiful but practical cases and covers.