SHOWstudio, IQONS, MySpace Fashion Boudoir, ShopVogue.tv, Hussein Chalayan’s decision to present his SS08 collection online in collaboration with ShowStudio and then the ever increasing number of fashion blogs (are any of you finding you have to devote more time to doing the daily blogroll read?), personal style share sites. I’m not going to do a thorough reflection of the state of fashion online media as I did back on the eve of 2007. But things have again advanced quite a bit.
2008 will now see the arrival of Internet Fashion Week. The concept of ‘fashion week’ transferred to the virtual space. This doesn’t sound too dissimilar from what we have been doing for the past few years right? Checking up on Catwalking.com and Style.com obsessively, looking up catwalk show videos on YouTube (some designers even stream their videos from their site not too long after the shows), getting the scoop from the biggie bloggers like Cathy Horyn and Diane Pernet and the bits and pieces of the fashion week scoop from various smaller bloggers (my pithy LFW coverage for example…). Essentially, as most of us can’t get to fashion week, we follow it up on the internet.
However, the concept at IFW will be expanded so that designers work with filmmakers, photographers and other artists to present their fashion worldwide. Initiator Panos Destanis (publisher of German fashion site Modabot…. I know I’m in good hands…) says ‘The conceptual, technological and aesthetic possibilities of the internet are not sufficiently utilised to communicate fashion.’ Well certainly, if the boundaries of live streaming, front-row camera angles, instant behind the scenes interviews and various new-fandangled methods of presentation of collections are utilised for IFW, then we might have something very interesting on our hands.
I do wonder if by getting ‘international’ designers to participate. do they mean talent from ALL over the world as opposed to the concentrated fashion capitals. This would really bind all the often overlooked fashion weeks (Toronto, Hong Kong, Portland, Kuala Lumpur to name a few random few…) onto one accessible platform. But then I suppose the interest would not be as strong if they didn’t collaborate with ‘established’ designers.
Either way, I’m interested to see how this pans out after having my curiosity piqued by a press release.
this is intresting, I am really curious how it will actually turn out?…2008, the time just flies…
It’s such a huge project and panos is working on it for quite some time now. I’m really curious and I’m eager to help as much as I can to make this thing really great…
We’re talkin’ heavy style stalkin, here! Like a kinda YouTube + Dailymotion + flickr for fashion pros’n’freaks, all remixed together… Feel dizzy, already!