As fashion week participants create shows that are increasingly consumer-oriented, all kinds of technology are used to ensure that designers and their creations reach as wide an audience as possible. While in the past fashion shows were more of an insider affair, now many design houses are trying to reach a broader demographic and of course trying to drive sales. Increasingly, clothing is being offered for sale right there, with some fashion houses offering a full range of brands in a see now, buy now capacity, from makeup to accessories to shoes. Technology now plays a huge role in all of our lives and nowhere is this more apparent than in fashion weeks, where technology really stole the show, at least in some way.
See now, buy now
While most of the watch now and buy now options were offered through each home’s existing e-commerce site and their physical stores, while Temperly London partnered with the Vero social app to allow consumers to buy three of her looks from fashion week right now.
Snapchat and Instagram Stories
While it remains to be seen which of these will win their ‘format war’, both were used quite extensively in fashion weeks. Misha Nonoo used Snapchat to slowly reveal her collection, while J Mendel documented her entire collection with Instagram Stories. Industry insiders seem to think that Instagram Stories is the perfect medium to share Fashion Week with fans.
Chatbots take over
Purchability was a big thing this season and both Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger introduced AI chatbots as a new user interface. With chatbots taking over our fashion shopping experiences, we hope they don’t develop artificial intelligence that gets smarter than us!
Virtual, mixed and augmented reality
Even the excitement of the shows themselves wasn’t enough, it seems. Many shows had an element of alternate reality. For example, at New York Fashion Week, Intel worked with several designers to stream their shows in virtual reality, powered by Voke’s GearVR app, so viewers could feel like they were in the front row. Rebecca Minkoff worked with augmented reality, working with the shopping app Zeekit to allow customers to upload a photo of themselves and see what they would look like in their favorite outfit from the show. Meanwhile, the real innovation came in the form of a mixed reality space, where an audience could wear Microsoft Hololens headsets to see an additional layer on top of reality. Soon, perhaps people from all over the world can be watching a fashion show in their own living room and feel like they are really there.
One thing is certain, technological change is rapid and fashion is not going to want to be left behind.