Vanity Fair’s June 2011 iPad Issue | Source: Vanity Fair

NEW YORK, United States — The iPad is one of the fastest growing consumer electronics devices in history. According to figures released by Apple, the number of units shipped in the first three quarters since launch left the company’s highly successful sibling products, the iPod and iPhone, in the dust when compared to the three quarters following their respective launches. And although recently reported component shortages and production problems may limit sales figures over the coming quarters, analysts have estimated that Apple could move 45 million iPads in 2011, on top of the 15 million they sold last year. To put that figure in perspective, this would make the iPad the second best selling album of all time following Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which sold 110 million copies, despite the fact that even an entry level iPad costs almost 50 times more than the average record.

The aesthetically appealing iPad has also found particular resonance with both fashion consumers and industry insiders. “Pictures and videos look amazing on the tablet,” said founder and editorial director of Dazed Group, Jefferson Hack. “Photographers, stylists, art directors and designers are all showing their ideas, inspirations and finished work on [Apple] tablets.”

But in stark contrast to the overwhelming success of Apple’s tablet, iPad magazines have yet to take off. Indeed, for many of the world’s largest publishers, who have poured millions into developing digital editions for a device that has often been declared “the saviour of magazines,” iPad apps still account for a tiny percentage of total circulation.“In the long run, it is certain that tablet ownership and readership of magazines on tablets will expand,” Jonathan Newhouse, chairman and president of Condé Nast International, told BoF. But figures released a few months back by the Audit Bureau of Circulation in the US show that despite rising iPad sales, average monthly downloads of iPad magazines slumped towards the end of 2010 after an initial surge of interest, indicating that consumers are giving the magazine app experience, as currently conceived, a collective thumbs down.

What went wrong?

The absence of digital subscriptions — meaning users had to manually purchase individual magazines, at costs that were far above normal subscription rates — has often been cited as the primary reason for this failure. But with a series of recent deals between Apple and major publishers like Condé Nast and Hearst allowing consumers to sign up for digital subscriptions inside magazine apps (publications like Esquire, O, Allure, Glamour, and Vanity Fair already, or will soon, offer in-app subscriptions), this theory is about to be put to the test.

“I think the real problem is that people just aren’t interested in these apps,” said Khoi Vinh, former design director of NYTimes.com. That’s because most iPad magazines are nothing more than delivery mechanisms for print content — what Condé Nast calls “digital replica editions” — built on the false premise the what works in print will work in digital, with slight modifications.

“Many publishers would probably agree that this is a broken premise,” said Vinh. “But I think what’s happening with a lot of these apps is that publishers have convinced themselves that what they’re doing is not just a regurgitation of print and that they’ve added enough bells and whistles to these apps to somehow make them different,” he continued. “In spite of all the added video and three-dimensional rotations and other nonsense, the core thinking behind a lot of these apps is still very, very print-centric.” As such, they are fundamentally out of sync with the way people engage online.

“Pretty much all of the major publishers are creating what I call ‘paper for the screen,’” said Remi Paringaux, creative director of the experimental iPad-only fashion magazine POST. But the internet is completely different to the print medium which preceded it. While print is a monologue to a passive audience, digital is a conversation that’s inherently active and social.

“Publishers should not rest on the assumption that readers want to be merely readers,” said Jeff Jarvis, highly respected media thinker, journalism professor and author of What Would Google Do? who spent ten years as president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, which owns Condé Nast. “They have proven a will to create and share,” he continued. “What makes the tablet special is that one can interact with content and with fellow readers — just presenting content is lazy.”

The iPad provides tremendous opportunity for publishers to experiment with new interactive experiences. But today, the most interesting magazine apps are personalised, social magazines like Flipboard — compiled in realtime from a user’s favourite websites and the things their friends are sharing on services like Facebook and Twitter — and useful services like Net-a-Porter’s iPad magazine, which closes the gap between editorial inspiration and retail.

At major media companies, rather than saving magazines, the iPad may actually be deluding publishers into believing that they can somehow avoid rethinking their products and business models in the face of a digital reality that presents fundamental challenges to both. “I think editors and publishers are fooling themselves into believing that the iPad returns to them the control over the experience, content, brand and business models that the web took away,” said Mr. Jarvis. “Sorry, but there is no going back.”

But there are signs that change is afoot, and magazine companies are beginning to think more creatively about how to use the iPad. “I believe there will be a strong market for these magazine ‘replicas,’ which will be a tablet version of the print product with added interactive features, like video,” said Mr. Newhouse. “But at the same time, publishers will produce a lot of completely new branded products for iPads, along with other tablet devices and smartphones.”

In order to earn a presence in the lives of today’s digital consumers, for whom the internet makes content abundantly available, these new products may have to be very different from magazines as we currently know them. “The best thing to do on tablets is to experiment: with form, with user interface, and with thinking of readers in new roles in new places and times,” continued Mr. Jarvis. “The tablet and the smartphone will merge and diverge in ways we can’t predict now.”

The iPad magazines of the future may look at lot less like the print-centric products we’re used to seeing and more like branded services that let users not just read about, but actively experience a stylistic point of view. Could a location-aware W app offer curated recommendations on nearby fashion and art? What might a Vogue shopping service look like? The possibilities are endless. But to seize this future, publishers will need to innovate in ways that may not be easy to accomplish from within.

“Maybe the best advice I can offer publishers is to disabuse themselves of the notion that a print staff can seamlessly start building successful digital products,” said Vinh. “As with the success or failure of any technology, it’s really about the people.”

Indeed, seizing the digital opportunity means completely rethinking the process of creating magazine content from the ground up, which requires a serious re-examination of the types of people a magazine needs, from the very bottom to the very top of the organisation. Perhaps more than anything, publishers need to seriously engage the start-up community, actively recruit from technology companies and search for new talent at forward-thinking university programs like New York’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and Stockholm’s Hyper Island.

Earlier this year, it was encouraging to see Andrew Siegal, senior vice president of strategy at Advance Publications, actively engaging the digital community at South by Southwest Interactive during a session called “Conde Nast in Start Up Mode.” But publishers need to do more.

Nobody knows what the ideal digital magazine experience looks like — or whether such a thing will even exist. But as publishers face the challenge of imagining the future and making up for lost mindshare, one thing seems clear. The iPad will not save magazines as they are. It’s magazines that must innovate in order to save themselves.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is Managing Editor of The Business of Fashion.

The BoF community looks on at Fashion Pioneers with Natalie Massenet | Photo: Lawrence Randall

LONDON, United Kingdom — It’s been quite the year for the BoF team. In January, we will celebrate our 4th birthday, having seen BoF grow from a passion project created from the sofa in my living room to a growing global community of like-minded fashion professionals that is BoF today.

We are grateful for all of the support our community has shown us over the past 12 months, from the success of our sold-out Fashion Pioneers series to the rapidly growing numbers of you who come to us every day for opinionated fashion business analysis and a highly-curated point of view on the day’s news. We now have over 150,000 followers on Twitter, 2,000 fans on Facebook and growing follower base on our new Tumblr page. We are honoured and grateful that so many of you take the time to engage and interact with us on a daily basis, in so many ways.

The international media has also been paying attention to the power and reach of our community, from the International Herald Tribune to Vogue Italia to The Evening Standard. Canada’s Macleans Magazine called BoF “The Economist of Fashion,” the Daily Telegraph included BoF in their round-up of “Britain’s Best Fashion Bloggers” and just this month British GQ gave us a little surprise for 2011 (check out number 92). What an honour and a great way to start the new year!

None of this would be possible without you, the global community of executives, designers, editors, students, academics, investors and supporters who have made BoF their daily must-read on the fashion business. We’re going to take a break over the holidays, but in the meantime here’s a look back to the articles and stories which fired up your interest and passions this past year. Thank you again for your continued support.

Happy holidays, happy new year, and see you in 2011!

1. In Tokyo, Abercrombie Misses Its Mark

Abercrombie & Fitch, Ginza | Source: Fashionsnap.com

When BoF’s W. David Marx filed his report on the new Abercrombie & Fitch store in Tokyo’s Ginza district earlier this year, calling the American fashion brand out for its culturally insensitive approach to international expansion, the fashion blogosphere lit up with conversation about the new store. Commenters on BoF joined in large numbers, describing their own experiences — positive and negative — at the brand’s Tokyo emporium and providing insider scoops on the brand’s bungled retail strategy in Japan.

2. BoF Exclusive | The New Creative Establishment 2010

The New Creative Establishment | Source: INDUSTRIE Magazine

Possibly the most controversial article of 2010 was our exclusive preview of The New Creative Establishment created by our friends at INDUSTRIE magazine. The preview rocketed to the top of our Most Read Articles list right away and has firmly held its position for more than a month. Lists like these always spark some kind of controversy, but the uproar about this one was heard in fashion quarters around the world, and indeed on all of the major fashion websites from Grazia Daily to Style.com. Who deserved to be on the list? Who didn’t? Who was missed? Are these kinds of lists constructive contributions to the fashion dialogue or just a way for a new magazine to get attention and flatter would-be collaborators? You decide.

3. Fashion 2.0 | What The Independent Article Didn’t Tell Us

Tavi Gevinson's Bow at Dior Couture | Source: Twitpic by SteffiSchuetze

Back in February when The Independent newspaper contacted several respected bloggers for comment on an article about the growing influence and questionable ethics of some fashion bloggers, BoF was more than happy to provide some thoughts. However, when the article was published quoting only editors from major magazines, we published our own article, to give the other side of the story.

4. Fashion 2.0 | Top 10 Fashion Films of the Season

Our twice-a-year rundowns of the top fashion films of the season continue to be very popular. Fred Butler’s Sunshowers film topped our ranking of fashion films in the Spring while Gareth Pugh’s tour de force film shown in Paris’ Bercy stadium grabbed the top spot in the Autumn ranking. If you have some time over the holiday break, sit back and enjoy these curated selections of fashion’s finest films.

5. BoF Exclusive | Zaldy Goco talks about designing for Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga

Michael Jackson by Zaldy | Source: Zaldy Goco

Michael Jackson’s untimely death right before he was about to kick off a 50 concert series in London shocked the world.  Not only did BoF get the global exclusive scoop from designer Zaldy Goco on the costumes he had designed for the King of Pop, but we also got his take on working with Lady Gaga, whose impact on fashion in 2010 was absolutely huge.

6. Fashion 2.0 | Suzy Menkes on the Growing Influence of Fashion Blogs

In early in 2010 Suzy Menkes issued a warning to bloggers about the risk of becoming mouthpieces for fashion brands, many of whom seem to be looking to manipulate bloggers into publishing what some consider to be nothing more than brand propaganda. Ever the pragmatist, Ms Menkes also realises that the growing impact and relevance of blogs and other social media is here to stay. She told Mary Scherpe of Stil in Berlin, “the world changed when fashion instead of being a monologue, became a conversation. And that’s never going to stop.”

7. Fashion 2.0 | The Fashionable Rise of Tumblr

Tumblr Screenshots | Source: Google Images

Tumblr is the latest social media platform to take the fashion industry by storm. Vikram Alexei Kansara’s round-up on the rise of fashion tumbling elicited a huge response amongst the Tumblr community and resulted in BoF being invited to become an editor on the official Tumblr fashion channel. BoF has also launched it’s own Tumblr to participate in this passionate community.

8. Fashion Pioneers | Jefferson Hack, Natalie Massenet and Nick Knight

Our series of in-depth, one-on-one interviews with fashion’s most inspiring pioneers have been extremely popular on BoF and have spread around the internet like wildfire. If you missed our interviews during the year, take the chance to listen to these pioneering fashion forces speak about the future of fashion:

Jefferson Hack on Fashion Media in The Era of Digital Beauty

Natalie Massenet Says to Create the Future, Follow the Consumer

Nick Knight Says Heart and Mind are the Key to Fashion Imagemaking

9. How Influential are the New Fashion Youth?

Much has been said about the increasing influence of young fashion bloggers, empowered with digital media and their own creativity. Indeed, today’s internet-empowered youth have the tools, access and information to create and promote their own fashion culture. Our exploration of the ‘new fashion youth’ demonstrated how this kind of online showcase may create opportunities for long-term careers in the fashion industry.

10. It’s Time Fashion Schools Got Down to Business

Thomas Tait’s Sketchbook | Source: Thomas Tait

Rounding out the top ten articles of the year on BoF was an opinion piece highlighting the lack of business training and preparation given to young fashion designers at fashion schools the world over. The article does not advocate upseting “the unique and delicate creative climates that have been carefully constructed at the world’s leading fashion colleges,” but “building some basic business training into the core fashion curriculum would be a very good thing indeed.”

Imran Amed is founder and editor of The Business of Fashion

Ungaro Spring/Summer 2011 | Source: Style.com

Giles Deacon’s Ungaro debut (Independent)
“Deacon, who became creative director of this grand French fashion house in spring this year, said he wanted to take it back to its distinctly French roots – and he has done just that.”

Is this the future of media? (Independent)
“Many companies have, in recent years, moved into the customer publishing sector, distributing their own glossy magazines to their client database. But the web version has so much more potential, being open to all and offering opportunities for instant purchase.”

Why a mobile strategy for retailers matters more than ever (Luxury Daily)
“By 2013 mobile devices will overtake PCs as the preferred way of accessing the Internet… sooner or later retailers will have to make well-informed technology decisions about how to tackle mobile commerce.”

On Message and on the Screen (IHT)
“This kind of cerebral and visual imagination makes a Hussein Chalayan fashion movie an ideal way of transmitting the designer’s thoughts and feelings in a poetic, but practical, way.”

Jefferson Hack interviews Gareth Pugh (Fashionista)
“In a series presented by Dazed and Confused called ‘Meet the Designer’ the magazine’s co-founder Jefferson Hack talks with [Pugh] about the tentative future of catwalk shows, his sold-out shop in Hong Kong and why Saint Martins does not a star make.”

LONDON, United Kingdom — Last Thursday evening, BoF editor-in-chief Imran Amed sat down with Jefferson Hack, founder and editorial director of Dazed Group — independent publishers of Dazed & Confused, Dazed Digital, AnOther Magazine and AnOther Man — to discuss the future of fashion media amidst an industry landscape that’s being radically reshaped by the forces of digital revolution, rapid globalisation and a post-recessionary economy. Called Fashion Pioneers, the event was the first in a new series of intimate, live-streaming conversations between Mr. Amed and the fashion industry’s most interesting operators. (RSS Readers: The interview video can be viewed here)

Opening the evening, Mr. Hack spoke passionately about teaming up with Rankin Waddell in 1992 to launch Dazed & Confused, then a black and white, self-distributed fanzine, positioned as a “cultural alternative” to both mainstream publications and cult style magazines of the moment, i-D and The Face. “We were complete outsiders,” he said. Dazed & Confused began as a way of “legitimising what was fringe or niche culture” but ultimately gave rise to “the trans-disciplinary integration of fashion, music, art and film, a template that’s become de rigueur in alternative culture magazines around the world,” said Mr. Hack.

Pressed on how the recent global economic crisis had impacted Dazed Group, Mr Hack was optimistic: “In times of recession, war and global uncertainty, people feel a connection to content that has meaning, that is authentic. What we’ve lost in revenue from some of our advertisers, we’ve definitely made up in market share and connection to our audience.”

As the evening continued, the conversation honed in on a vital and multifaceted subject that’s currently on the collective fashion brain: the future of fashion magazines in a digital age.

Today, people are consuming more fashion content than ever before. But as readers migrate online, monetisation remains a challenge. On this point, Mr. Hack cited a variety of business models, from freemium and subscriber-only content to sponsorships and ad-supported content, emphasising that there was no single solution to the problem: “There are many different micro ways to do it. There’s not one revenue model.”

On the content side of the equation, Mr. Hack noted that the process of creating a cover story had changed significantly with the rise of digital media, becoming a much more collaborative interaction with the cover star. Citing the recent Tilda Swinton cover story for Dazed & Confused, Mr. Hack said that he had asked himself: “what content can she create with us, not just how can we photograph and interview her.”

Ultimately, they decided to create a short film with Glen Luchford that complemented the print story and premiered both online at Dazed Digital and at the Curzon cinema in London. Via social media, fans from around the world were also able to participate and ask questions.

“It’s about creating an event and creating multi-platform content that can go beyond print,” said Mr. Hack, rejecting an oppositional relationship between print and digital and dismissing the much-heralded death of physical magazines in favour of a model that stresses deeper integration between media forms.

“For me, the web is about the moment. The magazine is much more about the collective memory. The magazine becomes a souvenir of what’s happening in the moment. Magazines won’t disappear, they’ll almost become more important in some ways,” said Mr. Hack, highlighting the growing importance of “specialisation” and what visionary science fiction author and futurist William Gibson terms mooks: “a hybrid of a book and a magazine where stories can be told in depth with beautiful photography.”

Both online and off, “the future of magazines is niche and independent,” said Mr. Hack, revealing for the first time a new Dazed Group initiative that launches this autumn: a series of incubator-like “satellite blogs” that will open up the Dazed & Confused platform to niche content creators and contributors in satellite cities around the world “like Reykjavik, Moscow and Sao Paulo where there is real energy… Mumbai for instance.” It’s a forward-thinking move that applies the philosophy of open software development and open platforms to content creation and magazines, proving that Mr. Hack understands digital media at a level that many of his peers do not.

If the future is about openness, it’s also about fluidity. This means digitally integrating into people’s lives wherever (and whenever) they are: “Let people engage with content when and how they want,” advised Mr. Hack, as he revealed, also for the first time, a demo of the new Dazed & Confused iPad application, which launches this summer with the magazine’s August issue.

We’ve been in an “initiation phase,” said Mr. Hack on the digital experimentation we’ve seen across the fashion industry thus far. “We are now entering into what is going to be a much deeper engagement phase,” he continued, citing Prada’s long-form digital film First Spring as an example of richer digital engagement.

“The old media model is a frozen moment in time; a monthly magazine, a seasonal trend — it’s over,” he said. “Digital culture is a constant stream. Either you adapt to it, or you are a dinosaur and you will die.”

Distilling many of his thoughts into a short, poetic mantra, Mr. Hack announced: “This is a new era of digital beauty.” At BoF, we think the new digital beauty — born from relentless digital innovation and characterised by fluid, multi-sensory elegance — is an extremely powerful theme that we will be covering and commenting on in the weeks and months to come.

Fashion Pioneers was presented in collaboration with Morgans Hotel Group and filmed by Pundersons Gardens. Many thanks to our friends from the fashion blogosphere who live-streamed the event to a global audience. Plans for our next Fashion Pioneers talk are already underway. Stay tuned to BoF for further details.

A selection of images from the event, held at London’s Sanderson Hotel

LONDON, United Kingdom —Today, the BoF team is busy preparing for our first FASHION PIONEERS interview with Jefferson Hack, Editorial Director of Dazed Group, to be held this Thursday at London’s Sanderson Hotel. Tickets for the event are completely sold out and a mix of BoF readers and friends from London’s fashion community will be joining us.

But, we want as many people as possible to participate in the interview. So, we are delighted to announce that in addition to a livestream on BoF, our friends from across the fashion and luxury blogosphere have graciously agreed to help us bring FASHION PIONEERS to the world. The event will be live streamed on the following sites:

United States: Refinery29 | Tavi Gevinson | Fashionista.com | JC Report

United Kingdom: Style Bubble | Fashion156

France: A Shaded View on Fashion | Luxury Society

Philippines: Bryanboy

Germany: Les Mads

We invite you all to tune in. And while you are watching, please send questions for Jefferson Hack to our Twitter account @_BoF_ using the hashtag #pioneers.

The livestream begins at 2pm New York | 7pm London | 8pm Paris and Berlin | 2am Manila (that’s for you, Bryanboy!)

Fashion Pioneers is presented in collaboration with Morgans Hotel Group and will be filmed by Pundersons Gardens

LONDON, United Kingdom — There are only 10 days until The Business of Fashion’s first FASHION PIONEERS interview with Jefferson Hack, Editorial Director of Dazed Group, at London’s Sanderson Hotel, and tickets for the live interview event have been snapped up at a rapid clip.

Already, fifty percent of the seats are gone. So, for those of you in London, given that everyone’s travel plans have been put on hold by that pesky, unpronounceable volcano in Iceland, why not join us for an evening that you can reach by tube, bus or taxi? No airplane required.

On 29 April, an intimate crowd of BoF readers, creative and business leaders, and digital innovators from London’s fashion community will gather to listen to Jefferson Hack speak about his fashion media career spanning almost two decades, the future of fashion magazines, and the East London hotbed from which he builds his creative teams for Dazed & Confused, Dazed Digital, AnOther Magazine and AnOther Man.

Since FASHION PIONEERS was unveiled, we have received requests from frustrated (and enthusiastic) BoF readers outside London asking whether they would be able to participate in the interview somehow. We are working on livestreaming the event and will be taking questions for Jefferson via Twitter, so as many of you can participate as possible. Send a tweet to @_BoF_ with your questions and stay tuned to BoF for more news.

Limited remaining tickets available for FASHION PIONEERS available here at £40, plus VAT.

Fashion Pioneers is presented in collaboration with Morgans Hotel Group and will be filmed by Pundersons Gardens

LONDON, United Kingdom — The Business of Fashion is pleased to announce the launch of FASHION PIONEERS, a series of live interview events with the industry’s most interesting operators, set amidst a fashion landscape that’s being radically reshaped by the forces of digital revolution and rapid globalisation in a post-recessionary economy.

Fashion Pioneers is presented in collaboration with Morgans Hotel Group and will be filmed by Pundersons Gardens

In the third and final installment of our in-depth feature on the future of fashion magazines, we address the biggest online trend of all — the fashion film.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Pioneered by SHOWstudio and powered by the spread of broadband internet and the popularity of video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, fashion film has emerged as the most influential new format for fashion editorial online. Shorts like “Black and White,” captured on set by Nick Knight and former assistant Ruth Hogben during Mr Knight’s shoots for British Vogue, use music and movement to communicate the power and poetry of fashion in a way that static editorial simply can’t.

Fashion film has taken off at Dazed Digital also. “We have been experimenting with some of these directors to shoot fashion videos direct to the web and the results are cost effective and really impressive,” said Jefferson Hack. For a recent editorial previewing the Autumn/Winter 2009 menswear collections, Dazed Digital published an online fashion film, shot by Matt Irwin and styled by Robbie Spencer, to accompany the still images.

But what’s resonating with readers? The beauty of digital is that publishers can monitor success and failure in realtime. “We’re able to pin-point with incredible accuracy, article by article and shoot by shoot, what people are really looking at,” said Jefferson Hack. “The blogging and re-tweeting of content also shows what’s really capturing people’s imaginations. It’s a tremendously useful feedback loop for the editors.”

Indeed, the ability to capture and quantify realtime feedback from readers themselves has helped build a stronger business case for lots of digital experiments and encouraged others in fashion media to follow suit.

Faced with the new digital reality, more and more fashion magazines are launching interactive experiments of their own. POP plans to redevelop thepop.com to coincide with its re-launched next season under new editorial direction, while i-D has promised that its “restructuring” will come with a renewed focus on the web. According to Matthew Hawker, Production Director at the magazine and the person charged with relaunching i-Dmagazine.com, the revamped web experience will include “a sophisticated content management system that will allow the world’s best photographers, stylists, DJs, filmmakers and designers to create their own environments within the editorial control of Terry Jones and the i-D team.”

So what will fashion magazines look like in a few years’ time? While websites like Dazed Digital and SHOWstudio point the way forward, offering readers greater immediacy and access, new opportunities for participation, and more multi-sensory content than ever before, nobody really knows the answer to that question. That’s because unlike print, digital is a medium that’s always evolving.

“We are now entering the restless world of interactive, self-created, digital-imaging: accessible, downloadable and constantly changing,” said Nick Knight. Indeed, unlike traditional photography that “ends” when the image is developed and printed, digital imagery on the internet has no fixed ending. It can be changed constantly by its creator or programmed to evolve based on inputs as varied as user interaction or time of day.

What Mr. Knight observes about digital imagery is true of digital media at large. Unlike print, the internet is not a stable medium with fixed properties. Quite the contrary. The web is an ever-changing universe in which new media forms like Twitter and Tumblr are literally being born every day. In this ecosystem of constant change, fashion magazines must accept revolution without end and learn to embrace constant experimentation, constant innovation and the constant birth and death of new editorial formats.

Read Part One – A Changing Landscape here and Part Two – Lots of Little Experiments here.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is a digital strategist and writer based in New York.

Images from SHOWstudio's "Dress Me Up, Dress Me Down"

Last time we surveyed the rapidly changing landscape of digital fashion media. Today, in the second part of our series on the future of fashion magazines, we explore the experimental approach that online pioneers like Jefferson Hack and Nick Knight are using to create unique content and experiences that truly bring fashion magazines into the digital age.

LONDON, United Kingdom — The internet’s ability to transmit information immediately, impossible in print and too expensive on television, has changed the way in which we create and consume content perhaps more than anything else. “Print magazines will never be the first to break any news,” said fashion blogger Diane Pernet, whose influential website, A Shaded View on Fashion, has been reporting live from fashion weeks, showrooms and studios around the world, capturing and transmitting the moment almost instantaneously with inexpensive camera phones and laptops.

In response, forward thinking magazines have done two things. Web pioneers like Dazed Digital, a fashion and culture platform launched in November 2006 by the publishers of Dazed & Confused magazine, have begun “live blogging” themselves, posting realtime reports from fashion shows in Paris, London, New York and Milan. But they’ve also learned to focus less on what’s new, a commodity that’s instantly available everywhere, and more on a unique point of view and reader experience that aren’t easily replicated. “It’s got to be more about experiencing the fashion; a stylistic point of view. It’s less and less about information,” said Jefferson Hack, founder and co-publisher at Dazed Group.

Indeed, the success of physical magazines like Purple Fashion and Katie Grand’s new venture Love, which sold-out on newsstands within days of its release, proves that an original point of view and well-crafted reader experience are important, no matter what the medium. But online, where information is easily and instantly exchanged, originality and experience are even more essential in attracting and keeping readers. “Where so many sites are aggregating content or acting as filters, it’s important that all the content on Dazed Digital is originated by us,” underscored Mr. Hack.

The immediacy of the internet has also given readers unprecedented access to the behind the scenes of the fashion industry. “Before, fashion shows were a closed affair for only a handful of professionals around the world. Now the news is dispersed instantly. Fashion is no longer the domain of a very few,” said blogger Diane Pernet. Indeed, amplified by the fashion world’s enthusiastic adoption of Twitter last season, consumer interest in the people and process behind the scenes of fashion is exploding and expectations are rising for fashion media to deliver.

Magazines have responded in some interesting ways. Olivier Zahm of Purple has launched a website called Purple Diary. Using the “micro-blogging” platform Tumblr, the site lets Mr. Zahm and his contributors chronicle their lives in realtime and post instant, and often intimate, updates directly to readers from fashion parties, runway shows, art happenings and photo shoots around the world.

Photographer Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio, which calls itself a “fashion website” rather than a magazine, has gone one step further, allowing its audience immediate and unparalleled access to the entire creative process of making fashion editorials for magazines like V and British Vogue. “The philosophy of the site is based on Nick’s belief that showing the entire creative process – from conception to completion – is beneficial for the artist, the audience and the art itself,” said Alex Fury, fashion director of SHOWstudio.

What’s more, on SHOWstudio the audience is encouraged to respond and contribute to projects that feature some of the most influential names in fashion like Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh and Kate Moss. For example, a project called “24 HRS” let viewers influence the narrative of a short film for the launch of Stefano Pilati’s “Edition 24″ collection for Yves Saint Laurent. Directed by Nick Knight, the entire shoot was broadcast live online, while model Jessica Miller acted out treatments submitted by SHOWstudio viewers. Another project, “Dress Me Up, Dress Me Down,” let viewers style model Liberty Ross for a photo shoot. “In a virtual chatroom, viewers posted their ideas for styling outfits for Liberty and forty ‘Stylists’ were chosen from the chatroom to style Liberty in their looks, live, via chatroom instructions,” said Alex Fury.

“Digital is breaking down the boundaries between artist, curator and consumer,” observed Ken Miller, a freelance editor and contributor to V, V Man and Interview magazines. “It’s become much more about the creative experience for all of the participants.”

Dazed Digital has also been experimenting with new ways to let readers participate in the creation of content. In April, Dazed became the first fashion magazine to stage a “twinterview,” giving readers the chance to interview Nathan Howdeshell and Hannah Blilie from The Gossip (Beth Ditto also joined at the last minute) live via Twitter. Dazed has also been using photo sharing site Flickr to source new talent, showcasing young photographers from their Flickr group on Dazed Digital and sometimes commissioning them to shoot for the print edition. “Social networking sites have played a big role in allowing users to participate in the magazine’s development,” said Jefferson Hack.

But perhaps more than anything else, fashion magazines are about fresh and provocative imagery. For decades, that largely meant still photography. But in recent seasons, that’s begun to change. “We are in the midst of a revolution in fashion imagery, moving away from illustration and stills photography,” said Nick Knight, director of SHOWstudio.

Read Part One – A Changing Landscape here and Part Three – The move to fashion film here.

Next time, in our third and final installment, we explore the biggest online fashion force of all — the growing dominance of the online fashion film.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is a digital strategist and writer based in New York.

Screen shot of DazedDigital.com

Fashion media has long been a BoF obsession. This week, we bring you an in-depth, three part series revealing the strategies, plans and expertise of some of the most innovative and respected players in the online fashion scene. Today, we start with an overview of the rapidly-evolving fashion media landscape.

NEW YORK, United States—A few weeks ago, independent fashion magazine i-D, founded in 1980 by art director Terry Jones, announced it was cutting back its print run to 6 issues per year, while major commercial titles like American Vogue have been forced to slash payroll and scale back on expenses.

Across the spectrum, times are tough for fashion magazines. With ad sales dramatically down, their main source of revenue is evaporating. And while online readership is growing, the “culture of free” that dominates the web means magazines earn nothing from internet subscriptions, while the sale of online ad space simply doesn’t generate enough income to cover cost. It’s a crisis I first examined a few months ago, amidst dark headlines about powerhouse publishers like Condé Nast.

As marketers continue to slash advertising budgets, there’s no doubt the current economic crisis is contributing to the problem. But it’s not the underlying issue. Even if demand for print advertising rebounds when this recession ends, things will never be as they once were. The fact is, we are in the midst of a digital revolution as powerful as Gutenberg that’s causing sustained, seismic upheaval across the publishing industry.

Readers are migrating online, where information is abundantly available and freely shareable. But that doesn’t mean content can’t be monetized. The demand is there. Indeed, people are consuming more content than ever. And there’s no shortage of people who want to supply it. The problem is, the internet is destroying the business structures of the past faster than the structures of the future are being created.

So what’s a magazine to do?

So far, nobody has cracked the code. But what’s increasingly clear is that there’s no single code to crack. As Clay Shirky, internet writer and professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program puts it, “there was one single business model in a world where media was scarce, but there needs to be many when media is abundant.”

In other words, there is no generalized answer to the problems facing publishing. “We are not moving from a world of Business Model A to a world of Business Model B. We are going from Business Model A to Business Models A to Z,” says Mr. Shirky. That means each publication will have to find a model (or models) that suits its particular content, readership and market position.

Although many new business models have been proposed, from “free” content that’s bundled with internet access to micropayments for individual articles, it’s extraordinarily difficult to predict which solutions will work. As with political revolutions, nobody really knows exactly what’s on the other side of this digital upheaval.

What’s more clear is that success is likely to come from lots of little experiments whose importance will be revealed only in retrospect. “Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as Craigslist did, as Wikipedia did,” says Mr. Shirky.

What’s also clear is that the challenge posed by the internet impacts more than business models alone. It’s not just how publishers package and deliver content that’s in play. It’s the content itself.

The internet is transforming the way in which content is both created and consumed, challenging the current emphasis on static words and pictures pasted on a page. Nobody really knows which new formats for telling stories will capture the collective imagination of editors and readers. Again, success is likely to come from lots of little experiments.

But admidst all the uncertainty that revolutions like this create, it’s important to remember writer and futurist William Gibson, who observed: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Indeed, amongst the fashion media, a handful of online pioneers have been conducting lots of little experiments in digital content that help point the way forward for their more mainstream counterparts who are just beginning to understand the impact of the internet.

Tomorrow, in part two, we investigate how little online experiments enable trailblazers like Jefferson Hack of Dazed Digital and Nick Knight of SHOWstudio to see into the future of fashion media.

Read Part Two – Lots of Little Experiments here and Part Three – The move to fashion film here.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is a digital strategist and writer based in New York.