THE DIGITAL FASHION REVOLUTION

Posted by the Fashion Editor at Large

I remember when I first got a laptop,  it was darn heavy. My first mobile phone was weighty. And dial-up Internet access was so slow I used to want to bang my head against the wall of my very 90s loft apartment in De Beauvoir road that my girlfriend Sonja used to whitewash from top to bottom every six months. Maybe it was all that white that drove me mad? ANYWAY.  Today I was reminded of those moments of technology frustration when I sat down to watch the Rodarte show live streamed from New York via Showstudio.com about an hour ago.

At first it was all good, and my tea-time interlude was accompanied by a nice strong cuppa and M&S jaffa cakes. Then Sarah Mower texted to say she couldn't get a picture. While feeling all smug that I could see Anna and Grace taking their seats and Kirsten Dunst being interviewed, the lights went down for the show and...the screen went black, and however hard I clicked and closed and re-opened the browser it remained resolutely dark. That was the end of that then. I'll probably be able to watch it later, but it won't be THE SAME. Grrr.

This rant precludes what I was intending to write about in this post, namely the digital revolution taking place in fashion and the explosion in fashion film as the medium of the future for designers to express their work and ideas. London Fashion Week has an entirely new arm this season. There is a digital space where designers can show films; Hussein Chalayan is doing one, as are Boudicca and newcomer Craig Lawrence. Hussein is calling me tomorow to tell me more about his film, so I will update then.

Over at the British Fashion Council there is a bunch of dedicated people making this digital thing happen, one of them is Clara Mercer. "The digital fashion revoution has been happening naturally; London is the worlds innovation capital, and we are the first of the global fashion weeks to have a dedicated digital space. Fashion has embraced online, and we're taking it to the world." she says. I'm looking forward to seeing how some of our most visual designers make use of the fashion film medium. Its something that excites me much. And also makes me think of McQueen again, and his unforgettable last show - Showstudio's brave and brilliant livestreaming try-out session. Lucky that I was there.

Fingers crossed for LFW. It's only a revolution when it WORKS!

http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/digitalschedule (to find out how you can get involved with fashion's digital revolution)
http://live.showstudio.com/ (for Rodarte)