Instagrammable Fashion

Op-Ed: The Rise of Instagrammable Fashion

It’s no longer news that Instagram has become fashion’s most embraced Internet tool. It has created a myriad of self-made, self-promoting starlets, turbo-boosted the rise of street style photography, and has fashion executives biting their elbows trying to come up with ways to market and sell products on the app. But, perhaps most importantly, it has influenced fashion design itself.

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Work:Space – Geoffrey B. Small

Last month I got a chance to visit the studio of Geoffrey B. Small, the American-born designer who has been working in Cavarzere, in the Veneto region of Italy. Veneto is the heart of the Italian fashion industry with a storied tradition of clothes making. It used to be that you could not throw a stone without hitting a fabric manufacturer or a shirt-making factory. Globalization has killed all that by outsourcing much of the work to other countries in Europe and Asia.

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SHOP:CASE – SVMOSCOW

When SVMOSCOW came on our radar we were pleasantly surprised that a forward-looking store like this could exist in Moscow. Hidden away in a loft-like setting without a shop window in the middle of Russia’s capital, with sparse interior in earthy tones, the boutique breaks all the stereotypes of a gaudy, in-your-face “Russian style” that Westerners are accustomed to. SVMOSCOW carries a cutting-edge mix of brands like Rick Owens, Ann Demeulemeester, and Yohji Yamamoto, among others. It was the first shop in Russia to buy Haider Ackermann and Vetements, and exclusively carry designers like Leon Emanuel Blanck and Goti.

Burberry Prorsum ready to wear fall winter 2015 in london

OP-ED: PUTTING FASHION BACK TOGETHER

These days the fashion press that still bothers writing about fashion is filled with two types of articles. It’s either opinion pieces decrying the broken fashion system, or news about individual designers taking change into their own hands.

Some of the woes befalling the fashion systems, according to the “broken fashion system” articles, is that the stores demand deliveries too soon and put them on sale too soon, and that the fast fashion system produces knockoffs at far cheaper prices and put them in stores before the real stuff hits the racks. Supposedly, the latter necessitates the former, but designers don’t like to be rushed, and the additional stress put on them is the other reason for the fashion system being broken. We have fall clothes filling the racks in the summer, and summer clothes in the winter. Everyone shops on sale.

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Comme des Garcons Dot Perfume

Following its European launch, Comme des Garcons is releasing a new scent, DOT, at Dover Street Market in New York today. Though the company has authored seventy-five scents, DOT is its fifth scent created in-house, and the first since 2011. The scent riffs on the polka dot, which could serve as an unofficial CDG emblem. The prime note in the scent is that of the Osmanthus flower, which grows in the parks all over Japan in the fall.