Internet has given birth to a new platform for the fashion lovers to be a part of fashion shows held anywhere in the world, to communicate with their favorite fashion designers and to purchase the wardrobe of their choice as the fashion brands are becoming more digitalized.
In an interview with fibre2fashion, Guyana-based fashion designer Felicia Persaud said, “I think it is wonderful that the doors of the exclusive fashion world have swung open on the Internet providing a platform for much bigger conversation about trends, style and just fashion in general.”
“As the consumer’s consumption of the ‘fashion image’ is immediate, it really breaks the barrier of the old dictatorial ways of the traditional fashion editors and buyers. In the virtual world there is a room for newer, emerging designers to build a retail presence and offer pieces to customers that are not found on the rack,” she adds.
For the first time in the fashion history, the fashion week was live streamed solely online in the Digital Fashion Week (DFW) held at Singapore a year ago. The participants of the fashion show presented their collection to an international audience.
“We aim to harness technology and creativity to promote home-grown designers in each city to the global audiences by capitalizing on the hype generated from the fashion shows. The buzz created will then be directly converted into sales and sync the fashion communication cycle with its retail cycle,” Mr. Keyis Ng, founder of DFW said in a statement.
Some of the recent fashion shows which were presented in digital platform includes London Collections: Men (LC: M) and Digital Accessory Showcase organized by the British Fashion Council (BFC), the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and the leading accessories brand Swarovski.
“The BFC’s digital innovation strategy aims to harness technology and creativity to promote British designers to global audiences,” said the spokesperson of BFC in a statement.
According to Persaud, virtual world allows emerging designers to be more experimental with their approach to merchandising the collection and it also helps it getting feedback quickly from the customers, which is a priceless benefit.
“Virtual world also helps the consumers to interpret the trends immediately through their own wardrobe and styling choices making it a more independent and unique approach to dressing,” she concludes.
Thus, the introduction of digitalization in fashion shows is creating a new platform for the emerging fashion designers to attract more consumers from the international market while generating more viewers for the fashion show itself.