Mohammad Dashti's Reading Reaction Journal - "From Couture to Conversation"

Reference

Michault, J. (2009 November 17th ). “From Couture to Conversation” The New York Times, Retrieved on December 2nd, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/fashion/17iht-rsocial.html

Summary

This article is actually talking about fashion media publicity nowadays. Today the biggest buzz in fashion is not the clothes or anything of that, it’s all about the social media , and how they represent their fashion by their own networks! Fashion designers spread their trends and accessories everywhere, from Youtube to Facebook. The article mentions a lot of examples about famous designers in the world, and how they manage to deal with the social media for their own agenda! And also how can they attract people by these networks to enter their fashion world of publicity.


Reaction

It’s all about image. Nowadays the biggest interest in the fashion industry is not about the trends for the next season or the fabulous celebrities styles, but what are they wearing? And whose fashion designs are they talking about? It’s all about publicity, and when I say publicity I mean the media, the social networks that represent fashion nowadays.

The social networks have a humongous effect on the fashion industry. In the past ten years they have represented their fashion sense and style by shows, Fashion Weeks and models, but now it’s very different. The internet and social networks have a really major affect on them; from Youtube to Facebook, we almost have the whole world on them, so it’s very easy to spread anything there. According to Mr. Gabbana: “Blogs are very important for us,”. Fashion designers and big fashion companies are using the social networks and blogs for their own publicity, and it’s working pretty well.

The article mentioned that the designers, Demonecia Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, moved some buyers out of their usual front row seats to give the spots to four fashion bloggers and installed laptops so the writers could blog and tweet during the show, and when you think about it you‘ll say, are they crazy? But if you think about it clearly and carefully, you’ll figure out that those bloggers are more important than the buyers. The bloggers are bringing the whole world to his show, live! And Mr. Dolce admits that: “The Web, for luxury brand, is not the future, but the present,” and that’s true people would like to see the latest collections of famous designers on web, but what is more exciting than seeing the upcoming collections live streaming on famous websites?

Youtube is a worldwide video center. Giant designers like Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Alexander McQueen are using Youtube for their own good image. Facebook also has a very big effect on people and it’s doing a very amazing job since it was founded 5 years ago, and it’s doing a very big favor for fashion designers, to sell their own work. Then there is Twitter the biggest network since 2007; according to the article, Louis Vuitton streamed his fashion show live using his Twitter feeds; and there is Lady Gaga, the real example of the power of social media, the article mentions her tweet cause on people from the live streaming of Alexander McQueen’s show, which led the site’s servers to crash, it was really fascinating!

Then, we have what Gucci did for his own publicity; he published his latest collections on his site and let the visitors upload their own photographs to see the pictures as a reflection of his styles and collections. In my opinion I think that people are becoming a little bit obsessed with these things; I agree with the article that “People are getting really excited about social media without really asking themselves if there is any reason to really get excited”, and that’s true, we know it’s fascinating and it’s a very beautiful thing to share and to look at, but it’s getting a little wild nowadays: for example, what Mr. Gonsorcik’s agency found about the Louis Vuitton Facebook page, that 760,120,000 fans are registered.

In the end of the article he mentioned other examples by other designers and authors, but it’s the same situation. I think that it’s true, the social networks are growing very fast, and it’s like everyone has his own Blogger or Facebook or even a Twitter or a Youtube account, and some how it terrifies me how the world has become very fast like this depending on these social networks and blogs; maybe it’s good, but there are always side affects for everything, so I think that it’s time that we need to slow down, and just take a break from all these things.