The Future of Digital Fashion Today

Fashion is finally falling head-over-heels for digital if the latest event from Westfield’s is anything to go by. The London shopping centre launched the first ever all-digital fashion event of its kind this week, with the intention of demonstrating what future shopping will be like and to showcase forward thinking fashion technology.

The Future Fashion event is running until April 1, allowing shoppers to use digital touch screens, QR codes and NFC to browse more than 500 spring 2012 products from retailers including Reiss, Dune, House of Fraser, Vero Moda, Accessorize and Calvin Klein Jeans.

Along with a cinema-style 3D catwalk, social photo-booths allowing shoppers to send their snaps straight to Facebook and Tweetable mirror images to show off their style, customers can also shop till their cards ignite on the stores huge digital shopping screens.

With the event being held at both Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City over the coming weeks, some retailers have already hailed the launch “ahead of its time” and “the perfect example of how bricks and mortar stores can embrace innovative technology”.

The Talks

Folk love when the Internet produces a novel concept that refreshes a tried-and-tested formula – so The Talks is right up our street. The weekly online interview magazine is the creation of Johannes Bonke and Sven Schumann, who’ve had the pleasure of chatting with a collection of cultural characters and infamous personalities from the worlds of fashion, music, art and film.

Rather than fulfilling their duty to attend obligatory interview session to publicise their latest venture, The Talks only features stars who have nothing to promote but instead simply chose to partake in an open, honest and original discussion about their lives.

As purveyors of designer digital, our eyes were drawn to interviews with some of the fashion industries raising stars and established icons – including photographers Bruce Weber and Ryan McGinley, designers  Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen and Valentino, and style blogger Scott Schuman.

The articles are full of whit, banter and frank confessions, providing a unique insight into the minds, ambitions and quirks of some of the most powerful players within the industry today.

As well as the exclusive line-up, Folk particularly love how the unpretentious approach to the content is complimented by the minimal design, refined selection of imagery and subtle aesthetic.

Combining all these design elements means this website is a pretty pleasurable and polished product. Gentlemen – we salute you.

Folk at the Fashion & Beauty Summit

As a digital agency who craft stories for luxury fashion and beauty brands, it made sense that Folk attend and talk about the current buzz subjects within digital at the first Fashion and Beauty Summit. We chose to focus on the four social platforms that are really helping brands in this sector tell their stories: twitter, tumblr, pinterest and instagram

Here is a copy of the presentation – it’s pretty visual and might not make much sense without Paul’s narrative … but it’s worth a look and offers a snapshop of some interesting things brands are doing right now.

Enjoy!

London Fashion Week Live

As the fashion world descends on London, and with many of our clients showing at the event, we at Folk have been taking a closer look at the explosion of digital during London Fashion Week. The main feature of next week’s event has to be the record number of shows being streamed live as the British Fashion Council expands its digital schedule.

A total of 44 designer collections will be watched live, with 22 shows being shown at the Courtyard Show Space at Somerset House, 12 from the Embankment Galleries Show Space, eight from Topshop’s venue at 1 Old Billingsgate Walk plus shows from around the city including Burberry Prorsum and Roksanda Ilincic.

It appears the fashion world, and particularly the newly innovative BFC, have realised the potential that digital can offer such an illustrious event. By streaming these shows live online at www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/live brands allow customers and fans a chance to watch and, more crucially, buy from the catwalk without having to visit the capital.

Of course one of the most interactive, accessible and influential marriages between fashion and digital has come about thanks to the domination of Twitter, Tumblr and the notorious style bloggers.

Editors, celebrities, bloggers and designers will all be posting snaps of their favorite pieces as models sashay past them on the runway, meaning any fashion fanatic can buy into the latest trend before the glossies have even hit the newsstands.

To capitalise on this online infatuation, the BFC are also working closely with Twitter during the shows. Question and answer sessions will be held over the six days with guests including designers Anya Hindmarch and Alice Temperley and Dylan Jones, editor of GQ and chair of the Fashion 2012 Menswear Committee.

There’s no doubt that digital will continue to dominate the world of  fashion in 2012, the only question remains who will be best in the online show?

Marni For H&M

We weren't too sad at missing the highly successful but horrendously tacky Versace and H&M collaboration, but upon hearing the news that Italian fashion house Marni will be next to launch a designer spring collection with the high-street giant we got more than a little bit excited. Known for her bold print patterns and modern elegant shapes, Marni’s Founder and Creative Director Consuelo Castiglioni has created a women’s and menswear collection for H&M which capture the essence of Marni – available from 8th March in stores and online.

To put it lightly, this partnership will be slick, classic and affordable… what more could a high street hawker want!?

A sure fire sell-out awaits.