Screenshot of BoF in 2007 | Source: BoF

LONDON, United Kingdom — This week marks a very special milestone in the history of The Business of Fashion: our 5th birthday!

Back in January 2007, I spent one hundred dollars for an annual Typepad subscription and, with the help of a friend, set up a blog at uberkid.typepad.com. I called it The Business of Fashion, cobbled together a clumsy looking header in Powerpoint and started jotting down ideas and observations about the fashion business.

There was no plan! Looking back, it’s a little cringeworthy to see how the blog shifted haphazardly from one subject to the next: reviewing the Milan menswear shows in one post, covering a Giles Deacon party in the next, analysing the luxury childrenswear market and reporting on senior executive shuffles at the Gap, all within the very first month and without any real editorial direction or strategy!

But we’ve come a long way since then and I’ve also learned a great deal about digital publishing. A few of the media properties that I most respect, including The Atlantic and The Guardian, have been buzzing about their “digital first” strategies. But BoF was born digital from day one, which has enabled us to take a particularly lean and responsive approach to publishing.

Indeed, one of the great strengths of digital – an inherently conversational medium – lies in the on-going dialogue it enables between content creators and the communities they attract. Rather than simply broadcasting to a passive audience, BoF has slowly but surely shaped an editorial voice that reflects the feedback and interests of our growing community of readers.

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Chanel Couture A/W 2011 | Source: Ecouterre

LONDON, United Kingdom — Death and disgrace do not often darken the world of fashion. In the case of the first, a designer normally dies long after retirement and his demise is of only local interest. In the case of the second, it rarely happens and can usually be covered up by one means or another. But in the last eighteen months there have been two tragedies that can neither be covered up, nor ignored. They are, of course, the death by suicide of Alexander McQueen and the disgrace of John Galliano at Christian Dior.

Their effect, traumatic enough when the events occurred, have ramifications not merely for London and Paris, but for the whole structure of the international fashion world. And the questions they raise must be answered.

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London skyline | Source: Vemma on Flickr

LONDON, United Kingdom — Design is generally about function leading form in a problem-solving exercise that almost always starts with a sense of discontent with what is generally available and a strong determination to make it better and even change radically a template that might have been used for many years. The result, in the hands of the right practitioner, is a completely new solution to the problem, a solution that works for the times, and makes previous thinking irrelevant.

In most design situations there is certainly some looking back and learning from the past — what modern architect would be modern if he didn’t know of the great masters from Palladio to Le Corbusier? But the knowledge is there only to inform new thinking, with no attempt to re-present old ideas as something new in design disciplines.

With the exception of cheap mass housing that works on the principle that deep in our psyches lies a desire to live in something as near to an eighteenth century country cottage as modern technology can create, fashion stands alone in its desire to put form before function and revisit earlier and often quite recent dress eras, in an almost endless series of revivals.

In an increasingly desperate attempt to hide the banality of current fashion thinking, some clueless designers, drafted in to revive old-established labels, actually sell exact copies of the original maestro’s most successful creations from the past, which is about as futile as car kits that clothe a modern machine in a pastiche of a roadster of 70 years ago. Pathetic in car kit sellers; disgraceful in highly paid and ludicrously over-valued fashion stars

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LONDON, United Kingdom — Ten years ago at 19:27 GMT on 27 November 2000, at a time before streaming runway shows, before Facebook, before YouTube, before the rise of Web 2.0 itself, Nick Knight’s transformative fashion website SHOWstudio.com went live. Mr. Knight, a boundary-breaking fashion photographer, had considered the internet and saw something that others did not: where many in the industry saw only ugliness and risk, Mr. Knight saw the potential for emotion, connection and opportunity. Crucially, he also understood that digital — inherently active, social, transparent and restless — would fundamentally transform the “closed” fashion system and radically change the way fashion media was created and consumed. While others averted their eyes, Mr. Knight set about catalysing the revolution.

Last Friday, only hours before the 10th anniversary of SHOWstudio’s launch, BoF editor-in-chief Imran Amed sat down with Mr. Knight for the third installment of FASHION PIONEERS, a series of intimate live-streamed conversations between Mr. Amed and the industry’s most interesting operators.

As the conversation unfolded in front of a live studio audience of 200 people at London’s Hospital Club, thousands of others were participating in the conversation online, which at one point made “Nick Knight” a trending topic on Twitter. The Twitter conversation was in turn broadcast back to the studio audience on twin screens on either side of the stage, creating a integrated link between the physical and virtual audiences participating in the live event.

The interview explored Mr. Knight’s start in fashion, the genesis of SHOWstudio.com, the watershed moment of Alexander McQueen’s Plato Atlantis and the rise of fashion entertainment. (RSS and Email subscribers click here to view the interview).

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LONDON, United Kingdom — Could FASHION PIONEERS get any better? We started our signature live interview series earlier this year with Jefferson Hack, co-founder and editorial director of Dazed Group in April and moved swiftly onto Natalie Massenet, founder an executive chairman of the groundbreaking e-commerce website Net-a-Porter, securing a global exclusive on the brand new Net-a-Porter iPad application.

Today, completing a veritable holy trinity of London’s digital fashion forces, we are honoured to announce that our next Fashion Pioneer will be Nick Knight, fashion photographer, founder and director of SHOWstudio.com, the pioneering website which first ushered fashion imagery and editorial into the digital era 10 years ago. Tickets available now!

On the very eve of SHOWstudio.com’s 10th anniversary, Nick Knight will sit down for a rare, in-depth, one-on-one conversation with BoF founder and editor Imran Amed on 26 November, 2010 at London’s Hospital Club to reflect on a remarkable career, the first ten years of SHOWstudio.com, and the future of fashion communication in this era of digital disruption and innovation.

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