Fashion 2.0

The iconic Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland is famously known for describing her role in creating style concepts as an “American woman who stands out there naked waiting for me to tell her what to wear.” Though this statement might have been true in the 1960’s, it’s just not the case anymore. In fact, I imagine the modern, Internet savvy, professional woman discreetly turning up her nose at the idea of someone prescribing her style. The fashion world is turning to the consumer for ideas. Websites such as Polyvore, Styleowner and Farfetch are pioneering a new age in online fashion. These sites create a unique browsing / productively stimulating experience. While the focus remains on fashion, the way these websites involve their users is groundbreaking, and yet the way they propose to utilise the usage statistics is slightly worrying.

Shopping online has become a hobby for most women. We browse, we ‘add to cart’, we ‘remove from cart’, we compare prices, we compare styles from different brands, we ‘checkout’, all from our laptops. You see something you like, and go look for it in store. They don’t have it in store, therefore you go and look for it online. The thing about all this is that buying clothes has become that much more accessible. There is nothing you can’t get, nothing you can’t source. Clients can go directly to the designers and ask for say- that maxi dress, but please make it knee length, or that dress but on sale. Today, clients can even buy directly from the runway using the new Moda Operandi site. The only factor websites and retailers need to worry about these days, is ‘nook color’ VARIETY. Farfetch.com , offers a unique online shopping experience. Simply by allowing the user to browse over 1000 fashion labels on one site, with one checkout irrespective of how many boutiques or labels you buy from. The consumer now has the option to browse thousands of garments. Just because they’re on your site doesn’t mean they’re buying and it is precisely for this reason that retailers have become desperate for some inside information, understanding their consumers.

Take Polyvore.com , while not selling anything it allows the user to create ‘mood boards’ or ‘sets’, using basically anything they can get their hands on. The main commodity they trade in is intelligence. A recent New Yorker article, chronicles the website’s CEO as she catalogues the activities of their users. Here are the statistics: Out of 1.4 million registered users there are at least 200 000 active set ‘creators’. These amateur stylists put together 30 000 sets a day and post them on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs. The site has a section called ‘Zeitgeist’ which presents the top 20 lists of users’ favourite brands, trends and celebrities. The average user spends 10 to 11 minutes per session and clicks on 12 Polyvore pages, they ‘import’ 1.2 million products a month and 70% of these users have posted a product on other social networking sites. 72% of the users have bought something they saw on Polyvore. As Polyvore gains users and popularity, fashion labels, with strict brand-guardianship parameters have even started testing the waters, by requesting that their brand not be combined with less desirable labels in Polyvore sets. Currently, Polyvore’s revenue is generated, one third through commissions arranged with online retailers using online competitions and the other two thirds through a combination of traditional ads. In the future, they hope to supplement their revenue by selling the information they gather about their user activities. I can’t help it, but these statistics, while being highly impressive, leave me with a kind of trepidation. What will they do with this information in the future?

They have created a kind of vacuum in which they test out marketing theories on unsuspecting consumers like lab rats. If you think about it, they’re not selling anything, rather just giving consumers a platform to express themselves …or creating a platform for advertisers to gauge the market? While not a problem in itself, this sense of having no privacy, of having your thoughts and actions predicted and even anticipated reminds me forcefully of George Orwell’s ‘1984’. In the novel, Orwell creates a society ruled by ‘Big Brother’, a government which even enforces a language called ‘Newspeak’, in which they remove certain words like ‘freedom’, rationalizing that if it doesn’t have a name it doesn’t exist. Similarly say Chanel doesn’t want to be in a Polyvore set with Gap… and the user is never allowed the option, does that mean that the combination of Gap and Chanel does not exist? See, mind games… I don’t like it.

I might just be playing devil’s advocate here because there are arguments for these websites as well. Styleowner.com creates a source of income for the diehard amateur stylist. Anyone at this moment (only in the US for now), can run an online boutique via Styleowner. On their website, an aspiring boutique owner can sign up, with no cost to themselves, select one of the online boutique templates supplied by the website, choose garments from 75 individual brands as well as big retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, and start selling clothes online. The user receives 10% of every sale, without ever shelling out a penny. While not only good practice for the enterprising young stylist, it creates a sense of ownership. The Styleowner editorial team have classified their users into three groups: the Entrepreneurial college student and stay-at-home mother; the Stylist and Industry Professional who wants to extend their personal shopping businesses; and the Fashion blogger who want to earn affiliate revenue on items they’re already featuring on their blogs. This site acts as a tool, although, from another angle, by allowing consumers to create their own profiles, this function provides a unique look into the buyer’s psyche. Allowing consumers to do the job of a retailer, we get a first-hand look at what the consumer actually wants out of an online shopping experience. What if Styleowner.com decide to use this information as revenue?

The one thing that all these websites have in common is the fact that all of them invite their users to create a profile. A profile, which then allows the user to add to their blogs, share amongst each other and generally facilitate creative consumer generated content. Today, the online fashion landscape invites its users to be themselves, to be individuals, to share their ideas and beliefs. In doing so, consumers are unwittingly sharing valuable marketable aspects of their psyche. In the case of Polyvore.com, part of their business plan is to sell the information they gather. I just can’t put my finger on it. I mean, by sharing everything we like and want, we are helping retailers to supply us with things we actually choose. How can that be bad? They are already making money out of gauging our fashion habits.But at what point do they start to utilize these insights, into our very souls, against us?