hocus pocus: chic in focus

As an industry, fashion, particularly high fashion has been at the forefront of incorporating information technology into their businesses, shifting their brick-and-mortar business model to one that is a hybrid between the old and the new online e-business. High fashion and luxury retail are industries where advertising revenue is especially indispensable; as such, the companies often have a large amount of capital to expend on their corporate brand image to establish themselves as the vanguard of ‘cool’.

This post will cover the first of a few major trends I have identified within this shift to the online world.

accessibility

Previously, if the average person wanted to view Chanel’s most recent runway collection, they could either see it in magazines a month or two after the actual runway show or they could fly to Paris and sit in and watch the show for themselves (not usually an option for the average devotee). With improvements in photo technology and the internet, high-quality images from the runway are available online minutes after a show is presented, accessible by anybody with an internet connection anywhere in the world.  

( Image courtesy of Style.com)

A step up and even faster, fashion industry insiders are able to grant exclusive access to these shows through the genius medium of microblogging- specifically Twitter. These industry insiders “tweet” their reactions and/or play-by-play commentary as they sit front row at these fashion shows in Paris or Milan, with all of this taking place in real-time. Followers of these posts can keep up with the shows as they are presented. Although restricted to 140-character limits and blurry mobile phone pictures uploaded to related online services, users are able to gain real-time understanding of the fashion collections; an understanding which is fully fleshed out once the professional photos are uploaded to Style.com after the show. An example of a top industry professional who tweets is Joe Zee, the Creative Director of Elle Magazine (@JoeZee).

Finally, the latest technology trend to hit the runways is broadcasting a live-stream of the fashion show worldwide. Again accessible by anyone with an internet connection, illustrious fashion houses such as Burberry and Louis Vuitton have jumped on the bandwagon recently, live-streaming their shows from London and Paris to viewers worldwide.

And what does this all boil down to? 

In a word, accessibility. These high fashion brands were previously only accessible by persons with enough excess income to afford the flight to Paris and the $4000 purses and $1000 t-shirts . With information technology, these brands were able to expand their audience exponentially and connect with fans living miles away from the fashion capitals of the world. This essentially is a massive expansion of their potential market, providing endless business opportunities and in this era, new crowd-sourcing opportunities.