The New Fashion Media Frontier
Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the numerous blogging engines on the web, fashion bloggers who have applied to Montreal Fashion Week have gone up to 15% of the media being accredited, according to Sensation Mode’s PR rep Sophie des Marais to La Presse. One accredited blogger wasn’t really a blogger, but a Facebook girl with over 1200 friends who loved fashion. This follows hot on the heels of internet sensation Scott Schuman, Bryan Boy, Tommy Ton, and Garance Doré who have had front row seats (and laptops) at the recent Dolce & Gabbana show in Milan.
This past Spring Summer 2010 fashion “month” has seen some of the most remarkable change of attitude towards fashion bloggers and the relationship between fashion and technology as a whole. A handful of shows have streamed their fashion shows live online, most notably Alexander McQueen and Louis Vuitton, as well as the timely release of LuxuryLab’s Digital IQ list of the most technologically competent luxury brands. Fashion 2.0 has never been such a hot commodity than now.
But, fashion bloggers are still languishing below top journalists and fashion editors at reputable publications in terms of recognition, according to UQAM’s Chairman of Public Relations and Communications, Bernard Motulsky. But the fact that fashion bloggers are making their own space at Montreal Fashion Week and to get recognition for it, is a step forward.
As we move further into the online fashion revolution, we can only expect more online innovations and initiatives.Style Coalition, for example is already one of the first to curate events that involve fashion and new media.SHOWStudio collaborates with some major designer brands and fashion forward artists by melding together fashion, art and technology with video, music and projections. It’s only with time will we see who will emerge as the leading voices of the new fashion media frontier.
Image credits: Kurt Geiger, Bryan Boy, Garance Doré
The Avant-Garde’s Sartorialist - Jak and Jil Blog
Scott Schuman’s photos tend to go towards the classically elegant, well-put together person, interspersed with some kooky and fun outfits. But at Jak and Jil, Toronto photographer Tommy Ton will aim for the “so unusual that it’s cool” photos - in high definition - of perhaps the most amazing shoes and accessories collection I have ever seen.
The photos focus mostly on the details, or taken in a way that your eyes are zooming on the glaring obvious item that’s making the entire outfit pop out. You might be familiar with the photo of the fake Chanel paper bag, or a photo of another fashion photographer strolling the street, that’s Tommy Ton, and I believe he’s a rising star.
Reading up on Tommy Ton, it’s to my own surprise that yet another Canadian fashion star is born. Having started his blog only last year in Sept 2008, after being online for only 3 months, China’s luxury retail giant Lane Crawford had contacted him to shoot their 2009 campaign, according to the Toronto Star. I mean, the guy is still living with his parents and busing his way like any normal Canadian citizen to New York for street photos.
It’s also great to know that just a couple of days ago, another fellow Canadian, Rad Hourani had shown his new bridge collection called Rad by Rad Hourani in New York’s Soho Grand Hotel. You can find the photos of his collection shot by Tommy on JakandJil.com. He’s now on the run making shoots for another Montreal-based company, Complexe Geometries (who by the way are gaining quite a lot of exposure, seen them in Clear Magazine as well), and recently gushed about seeing Balenciaga’s Nicholas Ghesquiere in his hotel lobby on Twitter.
I must admit that it’s been difficult to blog about Canadians in the fashion industry, but it’s so refreshing to see new talent gaining the attention they deserve. Not only are they discovered, but discovered ONLINE. I mean Lane Crawford is huge in China, how did they get the memo about Tommy Ton? I’m totally perplexed. By the way, Lane Crawford’s current success is owed to former CEO, Bonnie Brooks who is now CEO of The Bay, so expect The Bay to change in the near future.
The fashion industry definitely has its eyes set to conquer the online world.
Image credits to Tommy Ton
Dualité - Finally The Blog Meets Montreal Fashion
It seems it has taken forever for Fashion to finally catch up with the latest ongoings of the web world. The internet world is finally booming with fashion blogs, churning out the latest photos, videos, and opinions on what’s going on today.
Sadly, Montreal’s fashion industry seems to be stuck in a digital rut, where blogs are practically unheard of if you look across the leading Montreal news outlets. Even less pertaining to fashion. Most of the magazines and newspapers are owned by the same company, thus all websites are grouped under one roof. This can only mean that if the company cannot acknowledge updating themselves technology wise, all publications suffer the same fate.
Thus I bring you to the starting journey of a Montreal fashion blog winding itself up on the web and making use of the blog technologies.
I’ve put some some RSS feeds of some of the fashion blogs that I like to read on a regular basis, so far only one pertains to Montreal (and it’s not even about fashion!) since it’s the only one in English.
Créativité Montreal is a weekly online magazine on the latest design projects happening around the Montreal area. It touches base on architectural, interior and 3D object design. The articles are written by design enthusiast Sylvie Berkowicz, who hosted the now defunct design tv show “.d” on MusiMax.
The Business of Fashion is maintained by Imran Amed, part of the 360Fashion network. He offers his opinion of another side of the fashion industry we don’t hear often which is, of course, business. He posts regularly on the latest business ventures some companies take, from The Gap to Azzedine Alaïa, as well as my favorite topic of “Fashion 2.0″, the merging of technology and fashion.
Hilary Alexander of the The Daily Telegraph was someone whom Sylvie Berkowicz interviewed often for her show “.d” after fashion shows. Hilary has an incredible flair for the written word in describing a show. She’s absolutely my favorite fashion critic, though perhaps she’s not the most controversial. You can also see video reporting of the latest fashion show.
The Sartorialist is a photo fashion blog created by Scott Schuman. He rose to fame over the last year for having a keen eye for fashionable individuals on the streets of New York city. His simplistic photography skills have led him to contributing to Vogue, Style.com, GQ, and traveling abroad to the fashion capitals of Milan, Paris, London, Stockholm and recently Beijing. Once you start reading his blog, it’s hard to stop.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading what Dualité will bring to the Montreal, and hope the future will be bright for our fair Canadian city!
