With fashion month having just wrapped up, we’ve been spending a lot of time looking forward to Fall 2012. However, the spring season of 2012 is officially here! That means it’s time to cycle back a bit and look at what we want to wear right now. And since no wardrobe is complete without the finishing touches, we’ve got to look to what’s hot in the jewelry world for spring 2012.
Find out more on the Stylywear Blog
New Fashion & Beauty Social Network Site Gives Friends a Place to Give and Get Advice
OhThatsYou.com liberates users to express their “only me” style instead of chasing the “me too” of fashion
PR Newswire
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Starting September 8, thousands will gather at the world’s fashion capitals for the bi-annual extravaganza that is Fashion Week. Many more will have a virtual presence, using laptops and mobile devices to view and discuss the styles coming down the runway. Even with the integration of high tech and high fashion, a phenomenon dubbed Fashion 2.0, there continues to be a disconnect between imaginative designs and personal style. Fashion and beauty sites either suggest fantasy ensembles that wouldn’t fit most people, or they use simple-minded quizzes that produce fashion tips that are inaccurate, too generic or too overwhelming. More
Color experts Pantone, ICI, and Benjamin Moore have chosen their colors of their year for 2011. Find out how shades of these colors are appearing in fashion.
Minimalism has ruled fashion lately, and with it neutral colors like camel, grey, black, and white have dominated. The serious mood descended upon the world of apparel as the global economy hit some turbulence. Wisely, designers, brands, and fashion consumers turned to staple items in durable colors as sensible choices. The economic climate has still got some clearing to do, but it seems folks have seen the light at the end of the downturn tunnel. And for fashion that light is colored a sweet, citrus yellow. More
As we speak designers around the world are rolling out Pre-Fall collections for 2011, but unless you are looking for them you aren’t likely to see much coverage. The collections are often shown presentation style and sans the flashy events and parties that many have come to associate with fashion shows. So it’s easy to see why these new offerings don’t garner mass attention. Designer Michael Kors, however, has another theory on why people don’t drool over Pre-Fall fare.
“Everyone knows now that resort is important, but because the name ‘pre-fall’ is so ugly no one wants to acknowledge that these are the clothes you actually put in your closet,” said Kors. The sportswear king also lamented the premature wearing of heavy winter items at fashion week, saying the Pre-Fall items are more appropriate to the occasion. “You see everyone in the front row bundled in furs and tweeds in September and it looks insane!”
Above: Pre-Fall looks from (L to R) Pringle of Scotland, Oscar de la Renta, Jason Wu, Reed Krakoff, and Elie Tahari. Read the rest of the above article and take the poll at the FashionStake Blog
Photo: A view of Fashion’s Night Out 2010 fashion show – the biggest ever public fashion show in NYC history. via WWD.com
“For something to be considered prestigious it must be of high quality, well reputed, and – perhaps most of all – hard to attain. After all, how impressive would a Harvard degree be if half of the U.S. population held one? Elite brands in fashion trade and media rely on this prestige quotient to stay above the fray and command high levels of respect and retail price. Yet as the fashion industry moves toward what many are calling a more ‘democratic’ model, these brands are at a crossroads. They must adapt to increasing demands of accessibility, while maintaining a sense of exclusivity. To do so, new approaches to doing business are evolving daily.”
Read the rest at fashionscollective.com.
About Fashion’s Collection:
Fashion’s Collective is a resource focusing on the unique opportunities and challenges faced by the fashion and luxury industries online. Divided into marketing and style insights, Fashion’s Collective covers both the pragmatic business opportunities, as well as the fascinating stories of the brands behind them.
Once upon a time gaming was relegated to the Dungeons-and-Dragons sort of crowd. Yet as our lives evolve to include the more and more time spent with computers and mobile devices, games and other interactive applications are becoming the norm for everyone. The fashion world is no exception to this trend, as brands and media outlets are devising fresh ways to interact with new millennium fashion fans…
Brand awareness is certainly a big motivator for those that advertise online, but what these companies ultimately want is for us (readers, shoppers, and whatnot) to take action. Creating games and other interactive features does help to prompt a web surfer to act, but whether that action leads directly to sales remains to be seen.
Read the full article at the FashionStake Blog.
Above: Sketches from Tom Ford Womenswear Spring/Summer 2011. Photos from the recent New York fashion week presentation are being witheld until January of next year. The designer explains:
“The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they’re online, the world sees them. They don’t get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They’re in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They’re overexposed, you’re tired of them, they’ve lost their freshness… In addition, all of the fast-fashion companies that do a great job, by the way, knock everything off. So it’s everywhere all over the streets in three months and by the time you get it to the store, what’s the point?”
Read more at the FashionStake Blog
***The following has been republished from FashionStake Blog***
This year Milan Fashion Week was shook with the news that US Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour would only be attending three of the five days of shows. Labels were in a panic, trying to rearrange their schedules to make sure the real life “devil” in Prada would be able to attend their presentations. Why would an entire city of fashion elite get their collective panties in a bunch for one tiny woman?
For decades, fashion magazines were the ultimate bridge between the fashion world and the all-important consumer. This system created centralized powers like Anna Wintour who can make or break a brand with one swipe of their editor’s pen. But with steady cultural and technological changes, the tide is shifting away from the oligarchy of print and other “old” media and toward the democracy of online media like blogs.
Blogs are like the lighter, faster cousin of the magazine. Consumers no longer have to wait six months for fashion rags to publish a sliver of what they deem to be worthy from a new season of collections. Instead, fashion fans can turn to the agile blogosphere and see new collections the same day the mighty EICs see them. More importantly, blogs invite readers to participate in the dialogue of fashion, making the comment section as much a part of an article as the contents of the post. While a magazine dictates, blogs allow readers to be a part of the determination of what’s “in” fashion. In this way blogs are helping democratize the fashion industry.
Smart brands have picked up on this new power and have given bloggers access to the holy grail of fashion influence, previously exclusive to the most important magazine editors and celebrities: The Front Row Seat. Placing bloggers in these highly coveted spots has created a small backlash from a few members of the old guard, as when Grazia magazine’s style director Paula Reed lashed out at 13-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson who was seated in front of her at a Dior couture show. The blogger wore an over-sized bow in her hair, which became the object of Reed’s public ire. Still, the entire industry seems to recognize the power of harnessing public opinion using the online arena and, accordingly, blogs are here to stay.
***
Pictured above is blogger Susie Bubble, who is a virtual celebrity in the fashion blog circuit. See her very popular personal style blog at www.stylebubble.co.uk
We may not like to admit it to ourselves, but it can’t be denied: summer is coming to a close. Pretty soon bare arms and flip flops from sun up to sun down just aren’t going to cut it. As the sunny season fades and fall comes rushing in, we all start looking for ways to cover up but still be cute. But if you’re like most people, you don’t get your new season wardrobe in one fell swoop. Rather, you gradually build new pieces into your existing selections. So before you pack away all ALL your summer gear, have a look at the following tips to help stretch your summer wardrobe into the fall season.
Read the rest at the Shopparel Blog
In some ways, celebrities have the world at their fingertips. With heaps of money and access to just about anything, they get their pick of the finest luxury to be found anywhere. So when a celeb makes a choice it’s reflective of their tastes, personalities and even their values. Have a look at what these handbags might say about their owners.
Find out what Halle’s bag choices say about her + more celeb handbag personalities at the Coco Designer Bags Blog.
