A Fast and Flat Fashion World
by JEREMY LANGMEAD
© 2015 Jeremy Langmead
Distributed by The New York Times SyndicateFeatured Image:
Chromat, an architectural sportswear label, presented a new line of smart clothing featuring
technology from Intel, the processor manufacturer, during New York Fashion Week in September. (Credit: Fernando Leon/Getty Images for Chromat)
Before I got out of bed on a recent morning, or even opened my mouth, I visited 14 cities, found out what 64 friends were up to the previous night, checked out what several movie stars were wearing to a party in Los Angeles and bought a camel coat by Bottega Veneta, which was delivered that afternoon. And then my day began.
My iPhone kick-starts the day. Technology and social media have turned us into digital nomads able to roam the world and converse in almost any country — thanks to the international language of emoticons — without even leaving the room, or bed, for that matter.
They have also opened up countless new outlets for style inspiration and information — ones that seem more accessible, immediate and intimate than the fashion tomes on the newsstands. Taylor Swift posts an Instagram picture of the outfit she wore at an awards ceremony and suddenly her 49 million followers can consider buying that sparkly Ashish ensemble, too. Tommy Ton, the influential Canadian photographer and fashion blogger, uploads a street-style picture of a guy looking cool in a baseball top and men start to dig theirs out of their closets. Makeup lessons can be garnered for free from teenage vloggers who are as adept with their media as they are with their mascara. Who needs a Vogue editor anymore?
Everyone is now style literate. Even men — though some still pretend otherwise — know about dress codes, trends and sartorial rules. In the pre-Web days, men couldn't really ask questions about how to dress. Unlike women, they wouldn't dream of asking a colleague or buddy for advice, but now they can consult that discreet Google box and no one will know they tried to square-knot a bow tie.
Our purchasing habits have also been quickly changing. We're now shopping more and more on our smartphones. It's been reported that a third of fashion and luxury e-commerce transactions in the United States were made on mobile devices in the first quarter of 2015. That percentage is even higher in Japan and South Korea, where more than 50% of e-commerce transactions happened on mobile devices during that same period.
Fashion brands now have to cater to customers who are constantly on the move. They expect to have a relationship with a retailer or brand on whichever platform they choose at anytime. As a result, today we can shop not just with a click of a button, but with a swipe or a like. More and more social media platforms are becoming shoppable. Pinterest, where users share style and design ideas gathered from across the Web, has moved from the browsing and aspiring mindset to the buying one: This past summer it enabled its users to buy products they found on the site. Shazam, an app originally created to identify music, now enables you to buy jeans. Retailers link to product pages from their Instagram ads. And now Twitter and YouTube are adding "buy" buttons.
Some of the fashion industry has adjusted to this fast-paced, flattened world. Burberry lets some selected viewers watch its invite-only runway shows in real time, and buy some of the pieces with the click of a button. This past September the U.S. retailer Kohl's matched looks on its website to the reality TV star and designer Lauren Conrad's runway show, which it streamed on the social media app Periscope. The people watching the show from their smartphones were able to share their views and images as quickly as those seated in the front row. Meanwhile, Givenchy offered the general public the chance to get tickets to its Marina Abramovic-directed fashion show in New York this September via a unique URL.
The very idea of an exclusive front row seat now seems outmoded. In one way or another, we're all sitting next to Anna Wintour today. Showing collections on a catwalk six months before they appear in the store no longer seems so timely; forcing fashion editors to spend two months on the road watching those catwalk shows seems unnecessarily tedious; and making people leave their home or office and travel each time they want to buy something from a shop seems as old-fashioned and quaint as a Beatrix Potter tale.
The fashion industry now needs to look upon technology as a VIP guest at the party, not a gatecrasher. That's why the French heritage brand Hermes has just collaborated on a smartwatch with Apple; why Intel was a major presence at New York Fashion Week in the fall, with its sensors embedded in responsive garments; why brands now use the data they collect from interactions with potential customers on social media platforms to help determine what ends up for sale on the racks a few weeks later.
Of course, there are dissenters who disdain a fashion world that's driven by technology's pace. Do all those bloggers and vloggers have the experience and trained eye to know what they're talking about? What happens when editors no longer curate and help cut through the misinformed rambling? Instagram filters make the world look too rosy, and it seems that everything now has to be tailored to look good on a smartphone. E-tailers, for example, know that brighter colors look better on a screen; fashion houses now create catwalk sets that will look better on Instagram than they do if you're actually in the room.
These trends stretch far beyond fashion. A few months ago, I adopted two rescue kittens from an animal charity in London. The group was thrilled that I was giving them a home, and relieved I'd chosen the black kittens because they were hard to find homes for. Why? Because they don't show up so well on Instagram.
Like it or not, information is getting faster, the world is getting smaller and our capacity for newness is growing larger. It's a super-Uber world out there — one that enables more brands to interact with more people in more locations more quickly. We now talk with, not at, our consumers. We live in a world where technology enables an Olympic hero named Bruce to transition into a female pinup called Caitlyn in front of almost 3 million Twitter followers and bring needed attention to an often misunderstood community, and where Prince Charles' second cousin marries an American fashion maven and executive whom he first met on Instagram.
Our destinies have always been in our own hands, but never more so than today. Keep yours charged.
