Posted on March 12, 2010 – 13:00 in Current Affairs | Steven
Social Media and Fashion
Very interesting concept by American Apparel came through the mailbox this morning. Whilst it isn’t ground breaking it is still interesting in the sense that a lot of fashion companies haven’t quite gotten their head around utilizing the full potential of social media sites – saying that, hardly anyone has realized that potential. Mostly, because it means relinquishing creative control and passing it on to your fans, understandably a notion that would freak out most “creatives” in said companies. Not so American Apparel. “We’ve [ American Apparel ] just finished and shipped a collaboration with LOOKBOOK.nu to our stores in 20 countries. It’s a free 64 pg book that came out of the friendship we developed with the site over the past 18 months or so. From what we know, it’s the first instance of a fashion company ever doing anything like this on this scale.
Basically, we were intrigued with LOOKBOOK when it first came out, which led us to eventually advertise and feature their users on our site. We decided to do a bigger collaboration late last year and as part of it hosted a contest where their members submitted photos featuring their favorite American Apparel pieces. Now there are something like 7,000+ looks of people using our basics. Our 132 favorites became The LOOKBOOK.nu Lookbook by American Apparel.”
