#SocialMedia Is The New #FashionWeek #Trend

Bloomberg

As fashion week takes over various cities across the world people take to social media to share the styles on the street as well as the runway. Services like Tumblr have been embracing fashion week for a few years and Burberry partnered with Snapchat and a few instant messenger apps last year but now many of the big names - and some of the smaller ones - are embracing the power of social media.

I think we all expected at least one designer to embrace Instagram at some point. It's a great website to share off styles and with the right selfies models can share both photo shoots and spur of the moment shots. Dolce and Gabbana have taken up on the selfie trend and had their models pucker up and pose for selfies during their Autumn/Winter show in Milan. They carried iPads in cases matching the show's theme (Sicilian Western) and snapped both shots of themselves and the audience in the front row.

This is something completely new for an age that is obsessed with selfies and social media. Not only would this allow Dolce and Gabanna to share some of their new case designs but it also meant that their designs would end up on Instagram where many more people would see them. As well as this, they had a cardboard stand outside of their show where people could stick their heads in the western theme and snap pictures which they were encouraged to tag with #sicilianwestern. It's an ingenious concept that brings them well into the world of social media.

A photo posted by Davide Di Sciascio (@anotherdavide) on Jan 16, 2016 at 8:22am PST

Also on Instagram is Givenchy, now this isn't technically part of fashion week as this is his spring/summer collection for this year but it's worth mentioning. Givenchy have officially partnered up with Barneys to post an Instagram only lookbook on their account. This is the first time a designer has embraced Instagram this way and it allows anyone to see the gorgeous, if not slightly strange imagery. There is a link to a like to buy page in the Instagram's bio, from there you can click on the images you like and link to the Barneys website to buy the clothes.

A photo posted by Barneys New York (@barneysman) on Jan 21, 2016 at 5:59pm PST

Now for the slightly more unexpected: Calvin Klein invited Vine and Instagram star Cameron Dallas as their special guest. Most of the press and buyers had no clue who he was as he wasn't relevant to them but his backstage pictures garnered more likes than some of the celebrities in attendance. For Calvin Klein this is important as they don't just sell designer clothes. In the past they may have used David Beckham to advertise their men's underwear collection, now they use Justin Bieber in adverts and social media stars like Dallas on Instagram. Due to this use of social media they are guaranteed that the younger generation will want to buy their products and more importantly, they'll be able to afford to.

A photo posted by Calvin Klein (@calvinklein) on Jan 19, 2016 at 1:05pm PST

The strangest showing at Men's Fashion week was a smaller designer showing their designs on Grindr. That's right, the gay dating equivalent to Tinder. This means that people using the app probably aren’t going to be interested in watching a fashion show so this was a risky undertaking.

People on the app were directed to a link to where they could watch the show live and then on a continuous loop for 24 hours, so interested men did have the chance to check it out if they were in time zone that made the live show awkward. The stunt drew in hundreds of thousands of viewers and a third of them were watching the live show. Because J.W Anderson usually has a small group of buyers, they were hoping that this would catch more people's eyes. It was surprising stunt but not one that they can be certain paid off just yet.

Of course this wasn't the only social media news during January's events but these were some of the biggest and strangest. It's amazing to see how social media really is being employed by all sorts of companies and makes you wonder how they'll utilise it in later fashion weeks. This could be the start of a very long partnership.


 Rosina Brooker

Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF

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