Live from New York Fashion Week
It’s Fashion Week season! As New York Fashion Week, the first in line to show its Spring/Summer 2016 wares, has drawn to a close, I take a look at how fashion brands embrace new technology to woo their followers and boost sales within the changing landscape of the traditional fashion week. From online streaming to Periscope, a 360 reveal with Twitter’s elusive Halo to Insta-shows at Misha Nonoo.
No longer is fashion week a tradeshow for the elite, but a showcase, targeted directly at the consumer. In an era of fast fashion, this has changed not only the way brands market themselves, but how they design and curate their ready-to-wear collections for the next season. Over the past few years the main stages for fashion have been live streaming their catwalk shows, giving access to a global fashion audience. The live streams allow the voyeurs at home to pre-order next season’s trends direct from the catwalk. This not only gets brands more sales, but it also allows them to gauge what garments were successful from their catwalk collections, and which ones failed, ultimately allowing the audience to decide what goes into production. The consumer becomes the Anna Wintour of the next season collections.
Periscope
This season at New York Fashion Week, Periscope became the app of choice in what the team at Twitter are calling #FashionUnfiltered and #uncensored, giving editors and bloggers a platform that offers their followers un-edited access to the view from their guest seats at each show. Designers also had plans for Periscope to give their fans a look at the collections from the model’s perspective. You might notice a danger trend of when gadgets become gimmicks at NYFW this year — the Periscope and selfie stick mix on the Desigual catwalk is one of those gimmicks. We witnessed a more subtle and fashionable ‘Model Cam’ at Topshop’s F/W 2013 campaign, where Cara Delevingne wore a HD camera on the catwalk, that was broadcast live at the show and online.
Twitter Halo
Tommy Hilfiger highlighted the importance of social, implementing Twitter Halo for its debut at his NYFW show. What is Twitter Halo you ask? Well Twitter have remained very quiet about this new product / experiment. It seems Tommy is the only one with the know-how so far. The brand used a multi-camera device to capture 360 degree video with real-time sharing capabilities. Hilfiger could broadcast their next season collection to their immense social following, offering a big reveal to their Twitter followers — views of the collection moments before the model walked the runway and before the fashion week guests could see them in person. The first view goes social for the first time!
Insta-Shows
Where many designers might opt for holding presentations, rather than performing catwalk shows, designer Misha Nonoo took to Instagram this NY Fashion Week. For those of you who may be unaware, presentations are where the designers invite the fashion elite to peruse their collection, often during a live photoshoot. The Insta-show gave live, public access to what used to be a private and intimate setting for editors and bloggers to observe designer collections with the designer in the room. These doors were next in line to be burst open to a wider audience, who can hit ‘buy’ instantly on any piece from the collection they desire. The savvy designer Nonoo, who was advised by the one and only Sheryl Sandberg, has used Instagram to make selling incredibly easy — with lookbook shots ready to go and sent directly to her store for pre-orders.
While I salivate over the live offering over at London Fashion Week, which kicks off today, I recommend two Ones to Watch!
- The always innovative Topshop… What will they do next? They’ve done Live VR, drones, ‘Model Cam’, what’s next? Watch Live from multiple sources Sunday 20th September at 2pm
- Burberry will be producing the 1st Live Snapchat show Sunday 20th September at 7 p.m
