Why fashion is flowering online
The cosy world of couture is finally embracing the opportunities the web can offer, says Matt Munday
Here's how fashion used to work. Designers would showcase collections twice a year during the fashion weeks, then the key items would appear in glossy style magazines. The clothes would be chosen by a few select stylists, worn by models from a leading agency and shot by a handful of top photographers. It was a closed shop: you were either in with the in crowd, or consigned to the margins. But thanks to the democratising power of the internet, uptight elitism is going out of fashion.
Ironically, it's one of the old guard, the photographer Nick Knight, synonymous with i-D magazine's 1980s heyday, who is leading the charge. His online fashion broadcasting company, Showstudio (showstudio.com), allows anyone with a web browser and good ideas to participate in the creative process.
Projects have included inviting chatroom regulars to style a naked supermodel, Liberty Ross, who appeared live on a webcam while they chose her outfits (she was then filmed and the clips edited into content showcasing the new season's key looks); or Hussein Chalayan eschewing personally presenting his spring/summer 2008 mainline collection on the catwalk in favour of getting the singer Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, to perform a series of musical skits in different outfits, with viewers directing him and choosing his instruments (the films will be screened in a Paris gallery); or asking the models at a John Galliano show to recall their most vivid dreams, then filming them with actors and uploading the rushes for the public to edit.
There is method in the creative madness. "By the time you've viewed all that footage, you've probably spent an hour considering the values of the Galliano brand," says Knight, whose site attracts around 40,000 viewers a week. "Most people would consider those values for about a second in a magazine – if they stop on the ad.
"The weird thing is that fashion, which is a medium that looks to the future, has been slow to embrace the internet. When Showstudio started in 2000, people would say things like: 'I don't do the internet – send me a letter!' Now the big brands are desperate to make their presence felt online."
It's not just fashion brands being seduced by the offbeat world of Showstudio (which refused to work with any brands until 2005, to allow itself creative freedom). Evian recently chose to promote water's role in replenishing the body by enlisting Showstudio to set up an interactive video installation, in which fashionistas such as Lily Cole and Bella Freud, as well as the public, could zoom in on their favourite body parts and turn them into a digital collage. An esoteric concept, perhaps, but great art nonetheless (showstudio.com/evianbodyrenewal).
Elsewhere, the fashion establishment is trawling social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook for young creatives to team up with – a trend known as "collaborative branding". Nicola Formichetti, the creative director at Dazed & Confused magazine, regularly sources stylists and models this way. "MySpace is endless – you're not restricted by a casting director's book any more," he says. "Most people I now use are too much for casting directors anyway, because they might have loads of piercings, or crazy colours in their hair."
Formichetti, who owns a clothes store, Side by Side, in Tokyo's trendy Harajuku district, stocked with up-and-coming labels he finds on MySpace, doesn't even restrict himself to budding fashionistas. A recent advertising campaign he directed for Alexander McQueen's McQ label saw him hire young creatives on the strength of their MySpace profiles, including a poet and a dancer. They were instructed to photograph themselves wearing McQ for a poster campaign. One dressed as a superhero; another as a clown scattering multi-coloured ticker tape – exactly the kind of off-the-wall imagery that Formichetti had hoped for.
Formichetti is part of a new generation working in fashion who have embraced "Web 2.0", the so-called next generation of internet technologies and ventures characterised by collaborative working practices and user-generated content. "There are several individual blogs that are increasingly influential places to hear about new trends," he says. "People now buy magazines for the photography and to be inspired by new ideas – but not to get the latest information, because they get it much earlier online."
Even Bella Freud, the established fashion designer, who confesses she is "not a computer-y person", found herself logging on recently in a cyber-hunt for Elle Muliarchyk, a New York guerrilla artist who photographs herself trying on prohibitively expensive frocks in posh boutiques. "I eventually found her profile on Showstudio," Freud says, "and so I emailed into the ether and got this totally charming reply. Then she wrote to say she was coming to London, so we met up and did a project together." The results can be seen in the current issue of Tank magazine, and in an exhibition which opens on Monday at 19 Bruton Place, London W1.
Fashion still has its technophobes, however. Penny Martin, Showstudio's editor-in-chief, recalls a recent meeting with the Chambre Syndicale, the authority that governs couture: "It came up that we use mobile phones to make photo-reports from the fashion shows and they were horrified. But if you sit in a show today and look across the audience, there are hundreds of little flickering squares. You can't hold that back – you'd be like King Canute. All you can do is embrace it."
Nicola Formichetti's top fashion websites
A brilliant Japanese website with blogs from some of the leading style icons and tastemakers in the Japanese fashion world, such as Hiroshi Fujiwara, Jun Takahashi from Undercover, and Hiroki Nakamura from Visvim.
Dazed & Confused's online magazine, featuring video interviews and blogs.
Photo blogs from London's club scene, featuring beautiful people and cool looks. Shot by Alistair Allen.
Daily blogs from fabulous fashion icon and style journalist Diane Pernet.
Here's how fashion used to work. Designers would showcase collections twice a year during the fashion weeks, then the key items would appear in glossy style magazines. The clothes would be chosen by a few select stylists, worn by models from a leading agency and shot by a handful of top photographers. It was a closed shop: you were either in with the in crowd, or consigned to the margins. But thanks to the democratising power of the internet, uptight elitism is going out of fashion.
Ironically, it's one of the old guard, the photographer Nick Knight, synonymous with i-D magazine's 1980s heyday, who is leading the charge. His online fashion broadcasting company, Showstudio (showstudio.com), allows anyone with a web browser and good ideas to participate in the creative process.
Projects have included inviting chatroom regulars to style a naked supermodel, Liberty Ross, who appeared live on a webcam while they chose her outfits (she was then filmed and the clips edited into content showcasing the new season's key looks); or Hussein Chalayan eschewing personally presenting his spring/summer 2008 mainline collection on the catwalk in favour of getting the singer Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, to perform a series of musical skits in different outfits, with viewers directing him and choosing his instruments (the films will be screened in a Paris gallery); or asking the models at a John Galliano show to recall their most vivid dreams, then filming them with actors and uploading the rushes for the public to edit.
There is method in the creative madness. "By the time you've viewed all that footage, you've probably spent an hour considering the values of the Galliano brand," says Knight, whose site attracts around 40,000 viewers a week. "Most people would consider those values for about a second in a magazine – if they stop on the ad.
"The weird thing is that fashion, which is a medium that looks to the future, has been slow to embrace the internet. When Showstudio started in 2000, people would say things like: 'I don't do the internet – send me a letter!' Now the big brands are desperate to make their presence felt online."
It's not just fashion brands being seduced by the offbeat world of Showstudio (which refused to work with any brands until 2005, to allow itself creative freedom). Evian recently chose to promote water's role in replenishing the body by enlisting Showstudio to set up an interactive video installation, in which fashionistas such as Lily Cole and Bella Freud, as well as the public, could zoom in on their favourite body parts and turn them into a digital collage. An esoteric concept, perhaps, but great art nonetheless (showstudio.com/evianbodyrenewal).
Elsewhere, the fashion establishment is trawling social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook for young creatives to team up with – a trend known as "collaborative branding". Nicola Formichetti, the creative director at Dazed & Confused magazine, regularly sources stylists and models this way. "MySpace is endless – you're not restricted by a casting director's book any more," he says. "Most people I now use are too much for casting directors anyway, because they might have loads of piercings, or crazy colours in their hair."
Formichetti, who owns a clothes store, Side by Side, in Tokyo's trendy Harajuku district, stocked with up-and-coming labels he finds on MySpace, doesn't even restrict himself to budding fashionistas. A recent advertising campaign he directed for Alexander McQueen's McQ label saw him hire young creatives on the strength of their MySpace profiles, including a poet and a dancer. They were instructed to photograph themselves wearing McQ for a poster campaign. One dressed as a superhero; another as a clown scattering multi-coloured ticker tape – exactly the kind of off-the-wall imagery that Formichetti had hoped for.
Formichetti is part of a new generation working in fashion who have embraced "Web 2.0", the so-called next generation of internet technologies and ventures characterised by collaborative working practices and user-generated content. "There are several individual blogs that are increasingly influential places to hear about new trends," he says. "People now buy magazines for the photography and to be inspired by new ideas – but not to get the latest information, because they get it much earlier online."
Even Bella Freud, the established fashion designer, who confesses she is "not a computer-y person", found herself logging on recently in a cyber-hunt for Elle Muliarchyk, a New York guerrilla artist who photographs herself trying on prohibitively expensive frocks in posh boutiques. "I eventually found her profile on Showstudio," Freud says, "and so I emailed into the ether and got this totally charming reply. Then she wrote to say she was coming to London, so we met up and did a project together." The results can be seen in the current issue of Tank magazine, and in an exhibition which opens on Monday at 19 Bruton Place, London W1.
Fashion still has its technophobes, however. Penny Martin, Showstudio's editor-in-chief, recalls a recent meeting with the Chambre Syndicale, the authority that governs couture: "It came up that we use mobile phones to make photo-reports from the fashion shows and they were horrified. But if you sit in a show today and look across the audience, there are hundreds of little flickering squares. You can't hold that back – you'd be like King Canute. All you can do is embrace it."
Nicola Formichetti's top fashion websites
A brilliant Japanese website with blogs from some of the leading style icons and tastemakers in the Japanese fashion world, such as Hiroshi Fujiwara, Jun Takahashi from Undercover, and Hiroki Nakamura from Visvim.
Dazed & Confused's online magazine, featuring video interviews and blogs.
Photo blogs from London's club scene, featuring beautiful people and cool looks. Shot by Alistair Allen.
Daily blogs from fabulous fashion icon and style journalist Diane Pernet.