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Crowd Sourcing & Fashion

One of Web 2.0 trends in making its way into fashion. Crowd sourcing allows entrepreneurs go directly to customers for content, funding, and distribution by using an online social media model (think Facebook, Twiter).

I just read about a new web site called Fashion Stakes that intends to use Crowd Sourcing so that users can fund up and coming fashion designers, in exchange for credits on the designer’s clothes. Since it is very hard for a newcomer to obtain funding and/or be selected by a department store buyer, this concept seems extremely helpful. For the users, it gives them the opportunity to participate in the launch of a fashion line and to have access to new designs that are still (almost) exclusive. The founders are from Harvard Business School, where this project was born.I will give you updates once the site launches (presumably within the “next weeks”).

Another fashion company taking full advantage of online Crowd Sourcing is one of my favorites online store, ModCloth.com. Its founders also double as buyers and started buying and selling vintage. Now they sell both vintage and non-vintage and they use their web site to ask users to select which merchandise they should carry on the store. Yes, that is right, the customers are actually picking the store merchandise (at least to an extent). ModCloth claims that they have a much higher sell-through rate on the merchandise users picked.

Time will tell how this plays out for the fashion industry but it is sure awesome to see Internet-savvy entrepreneurs bring Web 2.0 technology to our (Fashionistas) benefit.

Today I have stumbled upon this piece of news.

According to Dr. Mark J. Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, Americans spent a whopping $326 billion on clothing and footwear last year. But that was only 2.98% of their overall disposable income. In 1950, on the other hand, Americans spent 11% of their discretionary income on dressing up. However, this does not mean we are buying less clothes (God forbid!). We are certainly buying more, since not only the price of clothing has decreased by 8.5% since 1929 (even when you adjust the numbers for inflation), but the rise of the Fast Fashion phenomenon also made it cheaper to buy apparel. If you want to feed your stylish inner geek, just click on Dr. Perry’s link, he has lots of info and even graphs on this subject.

So, long gone are the days where people would actually save money to invest on a timeless piece that would last forever on a chic wardrobe. Today, instead, we are stuffing our ever growing closets with more cheaper stuff.

It reminded me of this great book Fashion Victim: Our Love-Hate Relationship with Dressing, Shopping, and the Cost of Style
by journalist Michelle Lee. She dubs it McFashion. Wanna Super Size your closet?

Very, very sad news today, as we lost our beloved designer.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250249/Alexander-McQueen-commits-suicide.html

2010, the year stylists faltered.

They have been creating glamour cravings and gorgeous styles for the Awards season – through the thick and thin, waving through economic motions. Fashion Stylists to the Stars have allowed Fashion Followers to escape to a heavenly dream of one-of a-kind gowns.

Well, this Golden Globes this was over! What happened, Gentlemen and Ladies of the trade? What happened to the watchful eye of the Celebrity Stylist, the guardians of A-List taste?

Please allow me to explain myself no pointing fingers here. I raised these questions because they show a crack in a system supposed to be perfect. Such events should evoke and represent a type of Glamour Hollywood has always presented, only at this Golden Globes it was not. And for the reference, I am by far not the only person who thinks the attires this year’s attires fell really short of the collective expectation.

Culprits? Not sure, perhaps the recent recession and what that meant to be one of those who love what is now more vain than ever? What do you think?

I am waiting for the first damage control statements to come out, they usually do (may be formal, or gossipy). What will be the official version? Better yet, how will he Fashion Industry prevent such disaster to happen again? Will they create a Stylist Supervisor position?

I want to add an image to the post but I could not find a fashion-meets-reflective-in-a-melancholical kinda way. Or maybe I was just too harsh on my criteria, can you please help me select one of these from istockphoto? Email/Tweet me the number, please?

Yours Truly,

The Fashion Perpetrator