LONDON, United Kingdom —  In our next snippet from the E-Commerce Day talk at the 9 Festival for Fashion & Photography, we discuss the how online fashion retailers including Sarah Curran, CEO of my-wardrobe.com, José Neves, CEO of farfetch.com and Stephanie Phair, Director of theoutnet.com, are engaging with their fans through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and daily feedback updates to get to know their customers’ needs, wants and opinions.

Just today, Women’s Wear Daily posted a front-page article on how the fashion industry is coming to terms with social media, indicating that these tools have finally hit the radar screens of the industry at large. This is great news, possibly catalysed by the fact that marketing and advertising budgets have been slashed so fashion brands and retailers are looking for cost-effective (read: free) ways of getting the word out. Social media has hit the fashion mainstream, and from our discussion it was clear that our panelists are at the cutting edge.

How are you engaging in an online dialogue? Stephanie Phair said theOutnet.com is always listening, carefully monitoring feedback, blogs and posts about the brand new off-price site for Net-a-Porter, Sarah Curran has hired a full-time my-wardrobe.com resource to engage with bloggers and José Neves speaks of respecting bloggers and giving them the information they want about farfetch.com.

RSS and email subscribers, click here to watch the video.

LONDON, United Kingdom — London, of course, is widely known in the fashion world for its unbridled creativity and superb emerging fashion talent. But, increasingly, it could also be described as fashion’s Silicon Valley, with a growing number of innovative fashion ecommerce startups sprouting in the city, following in the footsteps of the ultimate luxury e-tailing pioneer, Net-a-Porter.com.

During my visit to Vienna for the 9 Festival for Fashion & Photography, I had the privilege of hosting a discussion amongst some of the newest fashion e-tailers on the London scene, bringing together Sarah Curran, CEO of my-wardrobe.com, José Neves, CEO of farfetch.com and Stephanie Phair, Director of theoutnet.com.

Thanks to our easy-to-use Flip Video Mino, we managed to capture some of the most poignant responses from our illustrious panel and are pleased to share them with you in the coming weeks. First up: How are your clients changing their shopping habits in the downturn?

RSS and email subscribers, click here to watch the video.

9 Festival for Fashion & Photography, by Jork Weisman

VIENNA, Austria — Every so often we are lucky to hear about wonderful initiatives to cultivate creativity and fashion outside the main fashion capitals. One such event is the 9 Festival for Fashion and Photography held this year between 28 May and 10 June in the Austrian capital, where the spirit of Helmut Lang still lives on and fashion remains a huge passion for the locals.

Each year, the fashion faithful from around Austria and other parts of Europe descend on Vienna to celebrate Austrian fashion designers, discuss emerging industry trends and topics, and otherwise immerse themselves in fashion for ten days when Vienna becomes the epicentre fashion world.

The entire conference is organised and conceived by Unit F büro für mode, an innovative government-funded initiative originally created by Ulrike Tschabitzer-Handler and Andreas Oberkanins to support, nurture and showcase the emerging fashion scene in Austria.

This year, The Business of Fashion is especially pleased to be participating in three events during the festival calendar:

Austrian Fashion Awards — Earlier this year, I nipped over to Vienna for a day to join a jury of fellow fashion professionals to shortlist the finalists for this years Austria Fashion Awards which recognise the best in emerging Austrian and International fashion design. Finalists for this year’s awards include Ali Zedtwitz, Christina Steiner, Christina Berger, RADIC / MORGER, Awareness & Consciousness and Wilfried Mayer.

The jury will meet again early next week to select the finalists before an awards presentation on Wednesday night’s Festival Gala.

E-Commerce Day — On Friday 5 May, we will chat with Stephanie Phair of theOutnet.com, Sarah Curran of my-wardrobe.com and Jose Neves of www.farfetch.com who will share their visions and business models for the future of ecommerce in the fashion industry.

Fashion Blogger Day — On Saturday 6 May, we will be discussing the future of fashion media with fashion bloggers from around Europe, including old friends Diane Pernet (AShadedViewOnFashion.com) and Susie Bubble (stylebubble.typepad.com), and new friends Julia Knolle (www.lesmads.com) and Johannes Thumfart (www.sueddeutsche.de).

The 9 Festival for Fashion and Photography will be held from 28 May to 10 June in Vienna, Austria. Campaign images feature the designs of nominated designers and are styled by fellow jury member Markus Ebner of Achtung Magazine.