It’s Digital, darling

This September, Topshop’s S/S 2013 show was the most watched in fashion history: 2.5 million Topshoppers, most of whom were not at London Fashion Week in person, engaged with the live-streamed extravaganza created in collaboration with Facebook.

As soon as looks came down the runway they could be shared with friends and purchased. The show’s soundtrack could be downloaded, as could behind-the-scenes live footage and make-up tutorials. Not being at the show was probably more fun than being there. The result was three million tweets: ‘…Loving the military-inspired outerwear, use of velvet and leather. Wow!’ ‘Peaked caps, high-heel lace-ups with brothel creeper soles and those rucksacks. Want it all!’ and more than 400 million Facebook impressions. That’s some marketing.

Live streaming is not a new concept. Five years ago — an age in digital time — Rosanna Falconer, 27, then a digital strategist for the British Fashion Council, championed the idea. She is now head of digital marketing at Matthew Williamson, and is amazed at how fast things have moved in the intervening years. ‘When I started at the BFC, Twitter was only a year old and platforms such as Instagram didn’t exist. Initially it was a daunting prospect for an industry accustomed to being behind closed doors, exposed only biannually to the public with a perfectly choreographed show. Now we rely on digital media so much that if a brand doesn’t have presence online, it doesn’t exist.’

Hot on the heels of music and publishing, fashion is an industry on the brink of a technological transformation. ‘We are at the crossroads of fashion and technology,’ explains Rachel Arthur, marketing editor of the WGSN trend forecasting service. ‘I compare this moment to the 1960s when design underwent a seismic shift to youth,’ agrees David Wolfe, creative director of Doneger Group, a New York-based fashion consultancy and forecasting service. ‘It’s the only thing happening in fashion that is new, really truly new.’

Also in September, at the Diane von Furstenberg show in New York, ‘wearable technology’ featured on the runway. Models wore ‘Google Glasses’, augmented-reality headsets containing smartphone functions including a camera, which Google is still in the process of developing but that hint at what might come.

‘Technology can make a customer feel connected to a brand 24/7,’ says Kate Ormrod of UK retail analyst Verdict. ‘It can give a brand personality.’ Luxury brands and high street chains have both been quick to invest in e-commerce and are building a presence on sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Facebook. ‘Aurora Fashions [Coast, Oasis, Warehouse], Urban Outfitters and M&S are retailers already doing this, and we expect more to follow in their wake,’ says Ormrod. This summer, the luxury conglomerate PPR announced a collaboration with the online fashion platform Yoox to manage e-shops for many of its most high-profile brands, including Alexander McQueen and Saint Laurent.

‘Technology has moved on so rapidly in the past five years, brought on by softwear costs dramatically coming down and smartphones becoming incredibly powerful and cheaper,’ explains Philip Delamore, who heads up a team of multi-disciplinary academics, designers and computer scientists at the London College of Fashion’s Fashion Digital Studio (FDS), a centre for technology innovation founded in 2003. Working with forward-thinking brands including Hussein Chalayan and CassettePlaya, they create innovative products such as softwear sensors embedded in fabric that can change prints or colours when triggered by an iPhone app, and a mobile app that mimics a body scanner with a view to solving the thorny issue of sizing.

Technology is changing the way we shop, as well as the way we interact with brands. The trailblazing new London flagships of Burberry and McQ enable customers to learn about the brand and products like never before. McQ customers in its Dover Street store can view still-life lookbooks on tablets then ‘throw’ the images on to giant interactive walls and watch them come to life as moving images on the big screen. Burberry’s seven-metre main display screen is the tallest in-store TV screen in the world, and the brand was also one of the first retailers to use radio frequency identification (RFID) tags embedded in clothes to trigger videos on ‘magic mirrors’ in-store that become a screen showing footage of how it was made or how it appeared on the catwalk.

The trailblazing Net-a-Porter e-shopping site changed the fashion landscape nearly 15 years ago. The site was founded in 1998 by former Tatler fashion editor Natalie Massenet, who was frustrated at the lack of stockists for her favourite designer jeans. It has subsequently spawned myriad rivals and niche e-sites. But is there a danger that if fashion gets too technological the whole experience could become less personalised? ‘Not at all,’ says Alison Loehnis, Net-a-Porter’s managing director. ‘Technology is amazing. It makes it happen. We used Aurasma [an image recognition iPhone or iPad app that triggers a portal that ultimately clicks into a moving image on your mobile] for projects such as the Karl launch [the first designer brand ever to be launched online].’ Net-a-Porter also used installations within shops in fashion capitals, which could be ‘brought to life’ via Aurasma apps on customer phones. ‘Now we’re looking into virtual changing rooms for jewellery and eyewear.’

‘The interesting thing will be to see “what’s next” in terms of new ways to engage with customers,’ says Shea Warnes, social media manager at advertising agency Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty (BBH) whose global clients include Burberry and Google. ‘You’ve got to be like Steve Jobs, giving people what they don’t know they want yet. Digital is moving faster than people.’ ‘It’s an evolving landscape,’ agrees Jeremy Langmead, editor-in-chief of Mr Porter, Net-a-Porter’s online menswear sibling, launched in February 2011. It has just developed the ‘TUX’ app for the iPad, which includes a guide to creating the perfect cocktails, a film with master tailors Brioni, a guide to party etiquette and perfect chat-up lines.