We work with a number of leading fashion brands, so we are always looking for insights that can inform our work. This post focuses on a few trends we are following in the world of online fashion.
Trend #1 – Power to the People
Bloggers have had a profound impact on the fashion industry. You may have heard of how Tavi Gevinson, the 13-year old fashion blogger, skipped school and became a fixture in the front rows of New York Fashion Week shows. Fashion bloggers have given a significant voice to a new (and much larger) group of people who are defining style each season.
I recently read a great article in the New Yorker, by Alexandra Jacobs, called “Fashion Democracy“. It discussed how websites like Polyvore are making the fashion world more democratic. Polyvore is an innovative site with a thriving community of fashion fans. Users create “sets”, which are collages of various designer products. They share these sets with other Polyvore users and external friends via social media tools. 30,000 sets are create each day. The Polyvore experience is compelling. With a tool like Polyvore, the process for how style is defined includes more voices and is more social in nature.
Trend #2 – Comprehensive Promotional Mini-Sites
Macy’s Fashion Director is a recently released promotional tool that highlights user-generated content. There is an “outfit maker” that allows users to build outfits by dragging tops, bottoms, dresses, etc. into a workspace where they can be arranged and manipulated. Often times users are given a challenge, “what would you wear to a movie premier”? For the first thirty days of the promotion, completed entries were voted upon by the general public and the look with the most votes was awarded a $500 Macy’s gift card prize.
The Fashion Director site also features celebrities including Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Clinton Kelly, and Rachel Roy conducting mockumentary-style “fashion interventions”. Macy’s strategy with Fashion Director blended elements of retail promotion, celebrity humor, user participation, and sweepstakes. While a “comprehensive promotional mini-site” may seem like an oxymoron, it describes the approach leading online fashion retailers are taking. In order to be successful one must develop a multi-channel strategy with numerous points for user engagement and participation.
Trend #3 – Curated Fashion Shows
Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2010 Fashion Show is another example of technology driving fashion forward. Many labels have put their fashion shows online before, but Ralph Lauren added another layer to the user experience by adding editorial perspective. Four editors, including Nina Garcia of Marie Clarie, provide commentary on the looks as the runway footage plays. Users can then shop the look, directly from the fashion show footage.
Trend #4 – Effective Augmented Reality Applications
Early attempts at virtual dressing rooms failed miserably. The quality was poor, the image compositing was rudimentary, and the execution was lacking the attention to detail required for leading fashion brands. However, new technology improvements are beginning to make augmented reality an effective marketing tool. Two recent applications are good examples of this:
Tobi is an ecommerce venture that focuses on “1-to-1 shopping”. They recently released a virtual dressing room, that gives users a opportunity to try on different products via their web cam. The resulting user experience is surprisingly memorable.
Ray Bay recently released a virtual mirror application, where users can virtually try on the latest Ray-Ban styles. The 3D engine for this application is quite advanced, as evident by the quality of the resulting images. Previous eyewear virtual mirror applications were never able to get it right, something always looked fake about the result. This is the first implementation where the composited images actually look good.
These trends show how technology continues to redefine the interactions of consumers and fans with fashion brands. It used to be a highly controllled one-way dialog. Now it is multi-directional, involves numerous channels/implementations, and includes many different types of audiences. Fashion labels who have the vision to define these new customer interactions and touch points will be the ones who profit most from the continued evolution of online fashion.
[...] Matt Ward wrote a very interesting post today. Here’s a quick excerpt:Four editors, including Nina Garcia of Marie Clarie, provide commentary on the looks as the runway footage plays. Users can then shop the look, directly from the fashion show footage. Trend #4 – Effective Augmented Reality Applications … [...]