chris morton

Irony

whitneymcn:

The industries that are having the greatest difficulty understanding, and adapting to, an era where the discovery and curation of great content are increasingly important are those that were themselves built on the discovery and curation of great content.

Objects of Desire

There was a great article about Lyst on Fashion’s Collective, here’s the link with full text below:

In fashion, we are inherently visual. Case in point: it’s the tweets that link to photos that get the most clicks because they provide the aesthetic fix we crave. The fashion industry has long understood this, creating beautiful pieces that flatter the body and please the eye. Even going beyond the tactile nature of a garment, everything from fashion advertising to in-store seeks to use visual cues to create an experience and capture a moment, always with the intent of driving sales.

In this industry, the most appreciated and celebrated individuals and brands are those who have a defined point of view. Whether it’s from the designer behind the collection, the fashion editor writing about it, the blogger commenting on it or the celebrity wearing it, the greater fashion audience finds guidance and inspiration in a point of view. We can’t all be Suzy Menkes after all, but we can certainly adhere to her opinions. Similarly, we’re not all Tim Gunn, but we can follow his style rules. We can’t all dress like our insanely cool best friend, but we can act on his or her influence.

Now, there’s a platform that satisfies our visual appetite as well as our urge to see what others are craving. Lyst is a platform that has been gaining traction since I first met them at Firenze4Ever in June. Essentially, Lyst is almost like a visualized Twitter newsfeed for fashion. Users can follow the people, brands and institutions that they love and create their own personal lists for others to follow. And what’s the best part? Products are shoppable and Lyst can even send you a notification when a product goes on sale.

Appropriately rolled out just before Fashion Week, Lyst launched a feature called “Runway Tracking” that allows users to add the runway looks that they love most to their lists. In turn, Lyst notifies them when those pieces become available for purchase anywhere in the world.

For individuals, the excitement of virtual browsing, and getting inspired by a variety of fashion that’s personally curated by you, is definitely the hook. Feeling personally validated when others follow you is the line. The ability to purchase and be notified of sales is the sinker.

For brands, creating your own list can be a way to showcase your collection range and be present in a burgeoning arena where hundreds of thousands of users in your target audience spend time. It can be a chance to facilitate a sale.(In the first six months alone, Lyst has generated millions in sales for its partners). But it can also be a way to tout your brand’s lifestyle. Think about appointing stylists to create virtual Lysts that appeal to the different ways your pieces can be worn? It might not be for every brand, but it could certainly be a way to reach a wider audience.

Want to know who has Lysts? Oscar de la Renta has one. So does Barneys. And Alexander Wang. Bloggers like Disney Roller Girl are there. Why aren’t you?

Storytelling in Fashion

There’s a great piece in today’s Business of Fashion from Debra Scherer about the importance of storytelling in fashion. Here’s the link, or you can read the article below:

NEW YORK, United States — I once began a fashion meeting at French Vogue in Paris with a question to the rest of the team: “Why do we take pictures of clothes?” Everyone just gave me that look and said “Debra!” I know it probably seemed crazy for a fashion editor to say this, but sometimes we need to ask ourselves the question and I think now is a great time to revisit this topic.

Franceline Prat, an editor at French Vogue and a mentor to so many of us, always reminds me that the most important work she did for the magazine was less often inspired by the clothes themselves than by the great stories that she and many of the forces in fashion’s creative ecosystem pulled directly from their own life experiences.

As Franceline said herself, “always remember the great characters you meet in your life, they will inspire you later on and you never know when.” Our own life stories will always be, for fashion, the strongest and most powerful reference of them all.

 An example she often cited was the shoot she did with Helmut Newton, inspired by a young lieutenant belonging to the Cadre Noir de Saumor, the elite French mounted cavalry which was stationed not far from where she grew up as a young belle of Nice society. The lieutenant had loved her from afar.

Many years later, trying to think of an idea that would please the very difficult Mr. Newton, she remembered the Cadre Noir and the young lieutenant, the beautiful black horses and the magnificent black uniforms, which were a particular fetish of the photographer. So, 20 years later she called up her young lieutenant (then a colonel!) and said, “Do you remember me? I want to come and do some photographs with you!” Luckily for the history of fashion photography, he agreed.

But today, fashion creatives just don’t seem to be pulling from these kinds of personal stories, neither at the shows nor in the pages of magazines. Collections are hailed for having great “pieces,” but if this becomes the focus, it leaves the rest of fashion’s creative ecosystem starving and unbalanced.

Magazines, like great absurdist theater, whether operatic or minimalist, tell only vague stories, made from carefully art directed still images that leave a lot of blanks for the reader to fill in. Who didn’t want to run off to Greece after seeing Bob Richardson’s romantically gorgeous editorial in French Vogue, a tear running down the girl’s tanned face as she ends her summer romance in the final spread of the editorial? This is what makes storytelling so important. It allows us to fool ourselves into believing that if we purchase the following list of items, or wear our hair a certain way, we too would be jetting off to Greece in no time. And if we just head over to Bergdorf’s, we too can have that life.

Why did this all start to change? Maybe it was because of the rise of celebrity in fashion. Or the focus on “behind the scenes.” Or the practice of referencing upon referencing. Maybe it was the focus publishers put on cross-marketing film and record releases. Or perhaps it was the their relationships with merchants, because, the truth is, for the most part, we now take pictures of clothing in order to optimize merchandising.

It was not so long ago that fashion enjoyed a rich period of more personal storytelling, starring creative forces like Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, Hussein Chalayan, Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang — and boy did they put on a show! All of these designers found tremendous inspiration in their own life stories. Then the teams that make up the rest of the ecosystem — from hair and makeup artists to shoemakers, jewelers, set designers and music producers — all contributed to the “mise en scene.” There seemed to be a balance then, between the vagueness that allowed us to dream and the more informational “where can I get that?’ aspect of it all.

While watching The September Issue, the documentary about the making of AmericanVogue’s September 2007 issue, at first I was honestly perplexed by Grace Coddington’s insistence that Galliano’s costume drama collection was her focus for the season. With all due respect to Mr. Galliano (for whom I do have a great deal of respect), it hardly seemed appropriate that in 2007, he would be the key reference point for the creative director of American Vogue considering the radical change we have seen in the way designers, editors, and photographers work today.

But upon further reflection, it made sense. Ms. Coddington comes from the era of fashion storytelling, which was like a beautiful dance between the couturiers, the models, the art directors, the editors and the photographers. They all lived and waltzed through the same world, where Monsieur Saint Laurent fell in love with The Ballet Russes; where Anna Wintour became enamoured with Mark Morris; where Diana Vreeland herself turned the whole of Vogue into a work of theatre both on the magazine’s pages and in its offices. Ms. Coddington was just going back to what she knew was the best way to tell a fashion story.

Luckily, we do have some great fashion storytellers today. So let’s give credit where credit is due. The Mulleavy sisters of Rodarte bring their hard style ballet costumes to Chelsea art galleries. Scott Sternberg refers to himself, not as a designer, but rather as someone who “makes content.” Thom Browne disrobes flying nuns to reveal exquisite clothing which launches a thousand new ideas on how to present clothing, not just in his theatre, but also how to present them in-store, how to present them in the context of a magazine, and, of course, how to present and use the pieces in the theatre of life, as Daphne Guinness, Anna Piaggi and Anna Dello Russo are more than happy to do. It’s much needed oxygen for the industry.

Who do you think are today’s best fashion storytellers?

Debra Scherer has worked at American Vogue, French Vogue and Italian Vogue, where she is currently a contributing editor. She is co-founder of The Little Squares.