Emerging Media » Fashioning Circuits

Color Forecast Website and App

Apr 192012

Want to know what the hottest color in street style fashion is in Paris? Milan? Antwerp? Then Color Forecast is the site for you! Created by European clothing retailer Pimkie, the new fashion orientated website features live streams of trendy streets in Paris, Milan, and Antwerp aimed at the idea that a person will want to know what color is trending that day.

Each of the three square screens in the middle of the webpage simultaneously move and interact with each other. The screen on the left is the live stream of a street in Paris, Milan, or Antwerp. The middle screen traces the color of the moving object’s (pedestrian’s) trajectory in the first screen against a black background. The third screen is a graph that calculates that information and displays a corresponding color scheme.

Image Courtesy of Color Forecast

The trending color report leads to a page that allows viewers to shop for clothing of the most viewed color on Pimkie’s site. Each day the featured color in each city is archived on the site. The website will soon be available as an iPhone app.

While watching the live stream in Antwerp, a couple dressed in neutral colors stopped and greeted a woman in a red puffy jacket. The red color sketched across the center screen mimicked the woman’s path in the first screen as she walked over to the couple. A color graph in the third screen featured red as the trending color. Continue reading »

Oscar de la Renta’s 2013 Bridal Collection on Pinterest

Emerging Media No Responses »

Apr 162012

Leave it to the Oscar de la Renta team to use the newest and fastest growing social photo-sharing site, Pinterest, to unveil the latest bridal collection. On Monday, April 16, 2012, Oscar de la Renta began live-pinning photos of the 2013 Bridal Show to its Pinterest board. Photos of the venue, show preparations, models, shoes, accessories, and, of course, the gowns, were being uploaded just as quickly as they were being liked and repinned on users’ personal Pinterest boards.

: Image Courtesy of Oscar de la Renta’s Pinterest Board “bridal.”

On Pinterest, the photos speak for themselves. Instead of using Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, Oscar de la Renta took a chance on a fairly new social platform to showcase the 2013 Bridal Collection. Considering how much buzz Pinterest continues to generate, maybe this was the best time for the fashion house to capitalize on the burgeoning photo-sharing site’s recent success.

The esteemed fashion house is no stranger to social media platforms. The Oscar de la Renta Tumblr was created last September in time for Fall 2011′s New York Fashion Week. The Tumblr account uploaded photos of the show in real-time as the entire show streamed in the center of the page. Continue reading »

Skivvies On Demand: The Automation Of…Underwear?

Emerging Media, Shopping, Uncategorized, Wearables 3 Responses »

Apr 102012

Ladies Undewear Options on MeUndies.com

Remember when lingerie shopping involved actually browsing a bricks-and-morter boutique and blushing under the judgemental gaze of snooty sales clerks? Well it seems that the lingerie boutique may be about to face the same tragic fate as the dinosaur. That is if the new underwear-on-demand company Me Undies has anything to say about it.

Me Undies has turned the traditional lingerie business model on its lacy head by forgoing the traditional boutique, and even the traditional retail outlet, and offering customers two very unique ways to shop for undies. The first is a sort of “skivvy of the month” subscription service wherby customers, both male and female, can have a curated selection of undies delivered straight to their door on a monthly autoship. Customers set up an account on meundies.com and input their unique underwear preferences by completing an online questionnaire. Their preferences are then saved for them in their own unique online underwear “drawer.” The signup process kind of reminds me of a social network except that it’s for…well…an underwear subscription.

The second, and I think most fascinating, method of skivvy acquisition that MeUndies proposes, however, is the the company’s national network of…wait for it…underwear vending machines! That’s right, you can now purchase your unmentionables out of a vending machine. The company has plans to place their underwear vending machines in hotels, fitness centers and airports nationwide, so that their customers can purchase the underwear of their choosing, at literally any hour, while enjoying greatly discounted prices – no salesperson required. You know, for all of those unexpected underwear emergencies we all find ourselves in. Touting their product as ”the world’s most comfortable underwear,” the company’s founders say that they aim for Me Undies to be a true e-commerce retailer and minimize it’s cost structure by operating online and via vending machine. Those savings, reportedly about 30% less than comparable designer undergarments, are then passed on to the consumer.

The retail lingerie sector has been long overdue for some innovation, and I certainly think Me Undies has a very unique business model. However, I don’t know that I’m quite ready to queue up to purchase my unmentionables out of an airport vending machine. What do you think? Could this perhaps be the start of a new trend in automated underwear? For some reason I’m hearing The Jetson’s theme song in my head right now.

Cyborgs Are People Too

Art, Emerging Media, Representations, Uncategorized No Responses »

Apr 102012

Hussein Chalayan's Laser Dress, 2008 The word “cyborg” likely conjures all sorts of dystopian imagery to mind. I know when I hear it I think of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a high tech costume with guns blazing, relentlessly blasting away at Sarah Conner. That’s probably the image that most folks think of actually. However is that what a real cyborg actually looks like in real life? Yes, I did write “real cyborg” and “real life.” Most people don’t realize this but there are real live cyborgs walking around every day right here in the year 2012. What’s more, they’ve been here, on this planet I mean, for as long as everyone else has and you probably even know quite a few of them. In fact, I am a cyborg myself. Continue reading »

Interactive Music Video: Shop While You Watch

Emerging Media, Music videos, Representations, Shopping 1 Response »

Apr 062012

Remember when you would watch a music video, lust after the clothes you’d seen, and then scour the internet searching for similar threads? Gone are those days! Ssense, an online clothing retailer, has styled the “World’s First Interactive Shoppable Music Video.”

The music video “I Think She Ready” features duo FKi, rapper Iggy Azalea, and Grammy-nominated producer Diplo, and they are all styled by Ssense. The video uses interactive hotspot technology to allow fans to view and shop for every item that is seen in the video. During the music video, white square icons with the letter “S” pop up on the screen. Rolling over the icon will expand the “S” to “SHOP THIS LOOK”. Clicking on those icons will take you to a screen that shows each of the products worn in the selected shot. Each article of clothing links to the Ssense product page where the item can be viewed and added to a cart for purchase.

Image Courtesy of Ssense.com

Even though the white icons only appear sporadically throughout the video, do we really want music videos to display these distracting icons each time we watch them? If this trend catches on (and I think it will), perhaps the icons will become smaller or less intrusive in future music videos. Continue reading »

Cell Phone Charging Handbag On Sale This Spring

Emerging Media, Wearables No Responses »

Mar 212012

Having to watch a cell phone battery die because there is no charger or charging station nearby is an incredibly frustrating and upsetting experience. Whether you were in the middle of a call, a text, a tweet, or listening to turn by turn directions in an area you’ve never been before (True story!), being disconnected from your mobile device can make you feel powerless. Richard Nicoll, a British fashion designer, may have developed a revolutionary device to ward off that vulnerability: Richard Nicoll’s Cell Phone Charging Handbag.

Ad Courtesy of The FashioniStyle

Debuting at last month’s London Fashion Week, the chic handbag has the capacity to charge iPhones, Androids, Blackberries, and even iPads. Once fully charged, the battery-operated handbag can offer extended use by simply plugging the device into an interior pocket. An accessory that hangs from the bag is a Bluetooth-enabled LED that emits light when there is an incoming call. Continue reading »

iOS app for Street Fashion Spotters, Thre.ad

Emerging Media No Responses »

Mar 142012

Screenshots of the app

Re-blog from Mashable: Street Fashion Spotters Get Their Photo App: Thre.ad.

I’m not sure how I feel about adding another photo app. As it is I can never decide whether to use the the phone camera or Instagram.

That said, I love the idea of style spotting on the street and the possibility of producing interactions. I have never done this but I am going to use this app as an excuse to give it a go!

Tech Couture: Fashion keeps a date with augmented reality

Art, Emerging Media, Shopping 2 Responses »

Mar 122012

M Saraswathy’s brief BusinessWorld article (Tech Couture: Fashion keeps a date with augmented reality) outlines some recent uses of AR in advertising, including uses at Lakme Fashion Week. The article ends with a tempered approach suggesting that so far, advertisers have not been able to tell if AR translates into more sales.

Even so, the possibilites for augmented reality with fashion advertising seem endless. Because clothing is a visual communicator, AR offers many interesting possibilities for layering visuals over bodies, environments, etc. The “Fashionista” tool below allows shoppers to try on clothing wherever they may be, using augmented reality.

But AR offers other tantalizing prospects for causing disjunction in the public spaces in which clothing is sold and worn.

So far the most interesting uses of AR that I have seen have been for aesthetic or critical purposes. I can envision AR being used for purposes like overlaying images of the workers who produce clothing items or the workshops in which they are produced. Or statistics about ethically sourced material. Or overlaying images of real women over advertisements or mannequins. Or, or, or…

A few links to interesting AR projects:

Is This the Future of Visual Merchandising?

Emerging Media, Shopping 3 Responses »

Feb 142012

A lovely young woman sits with her purse in her lap and her phone in her hands. She coyly smiles, looks around, and yawns as she waits in a department store. If a stranger begins to pester her, she ignores him. This scenario is fairly ordinary. However, this is no ordinary young woman: this is an android mannequin responding to curious shoppers from the inside of a window display.

As part of a Valentine’s Day promotion, Tokyo department store Takashimaya will be displaying Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Geminoid-F android mannequin in its store window. The life-like mannequin has a set of 60 different facial expressions at its disposal to lure in and interact with passing shoppers. The robot is connected to a Kinect sensor complete with facial recognition software that allows for it to have a unique response to each person who passes by. Continue reading »

Fashion: A Very Short Introduction – Media in History and Ethics

Annotated Bibliography, Emerging Media, History No Responses »

Feb 102012

Rebecca Arnold’s Fashion: A Very Short Introduction highlights the history of fashion through the lenses of Designers, Art, Industry, Shopping, Ethics, and Globalization. Throughout the book, I was struck by fashion’s very close relationship with media. Arnold notes that designers use the media to brand themselves in a certain way, and then create the clothes to match; for example, Coco Chanel was seen as simple and sleek, Donna Karen branded her self as a busy, working mom, and Donatella Versace is a jet setter type. (10). However, fashion’s relationship with the media goes much further back.

Below is a quick history of fashion and media as outlined by Arnold, followed by some ethical issues that have popped up over and over again as a result of their relationship.

18th Century

Arnold notes that fashion’s relationship with art has often been close, but often tense. Both art and fashion went through industrialization transformation at the same time, both becoming more commercialized and faster paced (32). When fashion started to change with the seasons in the 18th century, it affected the art industry as well (34). As soon as a portrait was painted, it was immediately dated, not just to the year or the decade, but to the season. Some artists tried to avoid this by draping their subjects in cloth, or even nude pieces. But even these revealed the popular figure of the time. In addition, fashionably conscious, well to do clients wanted to show of their good tastes and would pick out their dresses according to how good it would look in a portrait (38). Even at this point, fashion had become so mediated that some could not separate the two.

By the late 18th century, modern fashion media as we know it was beginning to develop. The first regular fashion magazine, “The Lady’s Magazine,” was published in the 1770s, setting in motion the industry of fashion images and journalism (60). Magazines not only helped couturiers spread their designs, they also helped spread cultural ideals about what it meant to be a woman, helping to instate and solidify cultural norms. Fashion plates were used, especially in England, to show off the latest styles of clothing, before photographs became wide-spread (63). The more modern use of the phrase, meaning that someone sets the standard in the latest styles has a direct correlation to this medium. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries