Designers refashion for Internet Age
FOR the first time ever, fashion is getting really wired. As New York’s fall 2006 ready-to-wear fashion shows get underway today, high-profile runway presentations will be streamed live over the Internet, blogged by insiders and enthusiasts -- complete with up-to-the minute cellphone photos and videos -- and even podcast. For the first time, shoppers, buyers and fashion dreamers will get a virtual front-row seat inside the tents at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, beginning with Kenneth Cole this morning at 9.
A few weeks ago, the show organizers, IMG Worldwide Inc., acted quickly to enable live video streaming of most of the 70 shows the company produces, so fashion followers will be able to see Marc Jacobs’ latest the same moment Anna Wintour does.
The move represents an effort by IMG to marry new media to its content of sporting events, international fashion shows and other entertainment vehicles, said Fern Mallis, IMG vice president. Fashion, it was decided, was the best place to start.
“It’s got beautiful women, sexy, great-looking clothes, fun, buzz, celebrities,” said Mallis. The runway shows, along with interviews and backstage action, can be found at www.imgfashionworld.com. IMG is working with MSN Video and Sprint Wireless to provide additional programming via Sprint’s new multimedia handsets and at www.msn.com for a month after the shows. IMG is considering similar multimedia access for the shows it will produce during L.A. fashion week this March.
Not surprisingly, bloggers will have a higher profile at the shows than ever before. They’ll provide their own commentary and imagery, via digital cameras and video, for both major and minor designers, potentially giving niche players broader exposure.
The L.A.-based site www.pajamasmedia.comwill post and link to the best work of nearly 30 bloggers at the New York shows, said project editor Hillary Johnson.
“Part of the idea is to challenge the blandness of mainstream fashion coverage,” Johnson said. “We are going to talk about what style means culturally and parse the meaning of how fashion reflects where we are in society now.”
Though technology might be seen as horning in on what has always been the exclusive purview of the fashion editors, that doesn’t bother the designers. Throughout the 1990s, the industry battled attempts to post images of its runway collections on the Internet, fearing counterfeiters and a loss of exclusivity. But now clearly it recognizes the promotional potential of the Web and other new media.
Karl Lagerfeld has cast a definitive blow to those old fears -- the highly anticipated New York debut of the Karl Lagerfeld/Lagerfeld Collection, which will close fashion week, will be the first major fashion show to be podcast. It will be available free at the iTunes Music Store at www.itunes.comand linked to www.karllagerfeld.com minutes after the show concludes at about 9 p.m. Feb. 10. On the podcast, the kinetic 67-year-old who designs for Chanel and Fendi will offer an edited review of his show, which occupies a time slot that’s often given to visiting fashion dignitaries. His show is being produced apart from the shows that IMG is streaming onto the Internet.
Clearly, the fashion industry is amid a revolution. Executives now host panel discussions, including one this week called “Blogging Is the New Black.”
On www.style.com, a new tool called “My Lookbook” has become to fashion what the queue is to Netflix, the wish list is to shopping sites and the play list is to the iPod. It allows users to scan outfit-by-outfit photos of hundreds of runway collections, select favorites and save them into a “lookbook” or list.
Candy Pratts Price, the site’s executive editor, said the organizing tool allows designers, retailers, consumers, editors and fans to be virtual fashion editors by creating their own visual stories and even sending shopping lists to stores or stylists. The site, a joint effort of WWD and Vogue, expects some 37 million page views during New York fashion week, which will conclude with the Chado Ralph Rucci show at 7 p.m. next Friday, as fans seek to know what’s next.
“That’s the beauty of it,” said Pratts Price. “You can be in Honolulu and say, ‘Oh, I wonder what Calvin is doing.’ At any hour, you can learn what length we are going to be wearing next fall. That fashion victim is desperately wanting to know.”
The name game
L.A. designer Max Azria is making a name change to distinguish his collections. His designer runway collection will be known as the Max Azria Collection while the less expensive, more commercial collections will be called BCBG Max Azria.
