He’s in Fashion
This week is Milan Fashion Week. Last week the fashionistas were in London; the week before? New York. Next Week? Paris. Here at MeetTheBoss.tv, largely thanks to Ozwald Boateng, there seems to be no getting away from A/W 2010 and S/S 2011.
In fact, I am beginning to feel like Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada) – although this could just be because we have similar hair.
It comes as no surprise that everyone seems to be caught up in the excitement of Fashion Week. Seven days after watching Ozwald Boateng’s spectacular show in Leicester Square, for instance, and I’m still hot for a Twitterfeed dedicated solely to mentions of Boateng’s illustrious name…
Of course, therein lies the nub. In a world so steeped in real-time media – blogging, Twitter, Facebook – the impact is clear for all to see. This blog post on Fashionably Marketing, for instance, notes how bloggers are having a profound effect on how designers and the media engaged with this year’s Fashion Week.
According to author Macala Wright, who uses Biz360 Community as a social media-monitoring tool, there were 15,996 online articles, blog posts, tweets and discussions on New York Fashion Week in the 30 days leading up to this year’s event. Wright notes how 45% of participants used Twitter to discuss topics such as models and designers, to PR gurus and celebrities.
The inherent obviousness here is that “real-time” media is just quicker than print. Yes magazines and newspapers can print the pictures the next day, but what is the point if some pesky blogger with the tool du jour (the iPhone) has snapped away at John Galliano’s latest creation, tweeted it, and then sat back as it gets retweeted around the world and becomes that day’s top trending topic?
In short, social media is so important today: its very presence is like that age-old allegory of the Tortoise and the Hare – only here it has been pillaged for all it is worth. Slow and steady wins the race? I think not.
Typically speaking of course, Fashion Week has long been a closed-door event, where only the invited few – editors, department stores buyers, celebrities and designers – get to see designer collections long before they will be stores.
But with online media at fashion week reportedly having grown 20 percent in the past six months, Smartphone-equipped bloggers and tweeters are now able to tell the world about the latest trends within seconds of models hitting the runway.
Fashion Week organizers IMG recently commented that bloggers accounted for 40 percent of the 3600 members of the press that were covering NYFW this year, while retail strategist and trend forecaster The Doneger Group even published a list of who it considered to be the key Fashion Week bloggers and tweeters.
Of course there is a difference between blogging or tweeting from the fashion world’s hottest shows and actually have the credentials to be firmly placed on the front row.
Steven Kolb, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) recently noted how this was the first year that bloggers were among the judges for the CFDA’s annual awards.
“Who rises to the top and who is credible is determined not that much differently from how The New York Times became such a big paper,” he recently told Yahoo! News. “The people that are going to get the numbers […] are the ones that are going to have a point of view, insight and are credible.” Nonetheless Kolb summed up the very fabric of why we’re so wrapped up in social media today by noting, “By not embracing blogging, tweeting and social networking, you are only doing bad things for your business.”
So, what’s your ROI (Return on Ignoring)?
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