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).

The evening began with a look back at Mr. Knight’s early days and the source of the tireless, forward-looking energy that has defined his career. “Ever since I started in photography I wanted to change it,” he said, recalling his days at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art. “Every waking hour I would take photographs. It quickly became an addiction.”

As the talk continued, it became abundantly clear that, unlike many people in the fashion industry, Mr. Knight is not fearful of change. Quite the opposite. He seems to thrive on it. “I think photography is dead,” he said, reflecting on the medium’s inability to evolve. “Film died some years ago. I don’t miss it,” he added without any trace of nostalgia. “None of my children read magazines. Fashion will be shaped by the internet.”

When Mr. Amed focused the conversation around the birth of SHOWstudio, Mr. Knight identified two important objectives that guided the launch of the site. The first was the desire to show clothes in motion. “Clothes are designed to be seen in movement. One could argue that a still photograph of a piece of clothing is to some degree a compromise of the designer’s original vision,” he said, outlining a thought process that informed his first experiments in online fashion film. The second objective was to communicate the process of making fashion imagery. “The life that I was seeing unfolding in front of me, as a fashion photographer, working with a whole range of people from Robert de Niro to Naomi Campbell was absolutely fascinating,” he said. But at the time, consumers only saw the finished product. “It’s allowing people in,” Mr. Knight said of SHOWstudio. “One of the biggest luxuries we have left is access.”

Nine years after SHOWstudio’s launch, Mr. Knight’s partnership with Alexander McQueen on Plato’s Atlantis — a technology-infused fashion extravaganza that brought together fashion, film and music — completely redefined fashion film and internet-enabled access. It was a watershed moment when the entire fashion industry suddenly saw that digital media could turn a runway show for a few hundred people into global fashion entertainment in which millions of people could participate in realtime. Underscoring the point, SHOWstudio’s live stream of the event came crashing down under the weight of interested generated by just one tweet from Lady Gaga, who debuted her new single “Bad Romance” at the end of the show. International Herald Tribune fashion editor Suzy Menkes called it a techno-revolution, while Gucci Group CEO Robert Polet said: “It is the biggest game change we are going to experience and embrace. It’s going to touch every aspect of our business.”

For Mr. Knight, it was Mr. McQueen’s decision to team up with Lady Gaga that was the masterstroke: “Yes it brought the whole bloody thing down, but yes it made it into an event where everyone saw the power of it… He turned that fashion show into entertainment and that’s where the difference is. That’s why there’s three and a half million hits on YouTube. Making fashion into entertainment across the internet is the key to it.”

Implying that consumer-facing fashion entertainment was the future of the industry, Mr. Knight observed: “There is a big sea change ahead. It’s a fundamental revolution in fashion really,” he continued. “Fashion shows are giving over to fashion film, the shows are completely changing, the scheduling of the shows is completely changing. We are in a moment of total flux.”

So what new technologies is Nick Knight most excited about? “Our mobile phones are [becoming] our screens for understanding fashion, as much as our computers were,” he said, insisting that what matters most is not the size of the screen or the quality of the visual, but the emotional connection that a communication creates. “Mobile gives you access,” he said. “For that, you don’t need high definition.”

Mr. Knight also referenced his continuing experiments in 3D scanning. “What I end up with is data and from that data I can make an object,” he explained. “It’s really exciting where that will go… I can use the data to make a living, talking, walking avatar — all things are possible, the digital modeling agency is there,” he said. Challenging the fashion industry to experiment with these new technologies, he commented: “We’re not waiting for technology, technology is waiting for us.”

But when asked what new tools young fashion imagemakers need to have in their arsenal, Mr. Knight replied simply: “Their heart and their mind is all,” emphasising that it’s the emotion and the idea behind a communication that matters most, not the tool. “If you’ve got something to say, you’ll find a way of saying it, you’ll find the most appropriate tool, whether it’s a photo booth in King’s Cross Station or whether it’s the 3D globe that I walked into in California a couple of months ago,” he continued. Indeed, while technology is radically changing fashion, according to Mr. Knight “it’s the human part of what you do that is way more important that anything else.”

As the evening drew to a close, a Twitter question from British Vogue’s creative director Robin Derrick triggered a very honest, personal and emotionally charged statement from Mr. Knight on the fraught relationship between fashion and society at large. “There are moments when you do question the validity… when you do question your own ethics and morals,” admitted Mr. Knight. “Fashion tends to be one very, very narrow parameter on what is acceptable beauty,” he noted.

“I think the fashion industry is so narrow in terms of what it will accept. I’ve fought very, very hard to articulate an alternative,” said Mr. Knight, who, in the spirit of a true fashion revolutionary, driven by heart, mind and the pursuit of change, has relentlessly used his craft to break social boundaries, as well as aesthetic and technological ones. “I hate the idea that fashion photography is exclusive in the way that it excludes people from feeling part of society. I think there’s beauty in every human being and it’s up to the person looking at it to bring it out.”

Fashion Pioneers was filmed by Pundersons Gardens. Many thanks to our friends from the fashion blogosphere who live-streamed the event to a global audience.

A selection of images from the event, held at The Hospital Club in London.

LONDON, United Kingdom — SHOWstudio.com is ten years old tomorrow and that means our third Fashion Pioneers interview is upon us today. This evening, Nick Knight, one of the industry’s most respected photographers will sit down with The Business of Fashion in front of a live studio audience in London’s Hospital Club to discuss his career, ten years of SHOWstudio.com, and the future of fashion communication in the age of digital disruption.

As usual, we will livestream the interview here on BoF and have teamed up with fashion blogs and websites who have generously agreed to stream the interview to their audiences and communities too. We invite you all to tune in.

Please send questions for Nick Knight to our Twitter account @_BoF_ using the hashtag #BoFLive, and participate in our global virtual discussion by tweeting your questions, comments and observations along the way.

Canada: 1:30pm EST | Flare.com | Searching for Style

France 7:30pm CET | A Shaded View on Fashion | Luxury Society

Germany 7:30pm CET | Les Mads

Philippines 2:30am (+1 day) | Bryanboy

Spain 7:30pm EST | Kate Loves Me

United Kingdom 6:30pm GMT | Style Bubble | Fashion156 | Style Salvage | Wallpaper.com | SHOWstudio.com | Liberty London Girl | DisneyRollerGirl

United States 1:30pm EST | Fashionista.com | JC Report

Fashion Pioneers is brought to you exclusively by The Business of Fashion, in association with The Hospital Club, and will be filmed and streamed live to viewers around the world by Pundersons Gardens

Nick Knight - The Business of Fashion - Fashion Pioneers

LONDON, United Kingdom — This Friday, The Business of Fashion will sit down for an in-depth interview with Nick Knight, the third in our series of FASHION PIONEERS speaking to a live studio audience in London and livestreamed to thousands of people around the world.

For those of you in London, we have a few remaining tickets for this very exciting and rare opportunity to hear directly from one of the most influential and important fashion image-makers. Mr Knight will speak to us about fashion image creation in the digital age and reflect on ten years of SHOWstudio.com, the groundbreaking website which was founded exactly ten years ago.

As with our past two events with Jefferson Hack and Natalie Massenet, we will be bringing together the crème de la crème of the diverse BoF community, including leading editors, fashion designers and bloggers.

If you would like to join us at London’s Hospital Club, please click here for tickets. Only a few seats remain!

Fashion Pioneers is brought to you exclusively by The Business of Fashion, in association with The Hospital Club, and will be filmed and streamed live to viewers around the world by Pundersons Gardens

“I’m very pleased to be given the opportunity to discuss the unique and groundbreaking work of SHOWSTUDIO.COM on such a well-respected and influential online platform as The Business of Fashion. The internet is the perfect conduit to communicate fashion globally via the new medium of fashion film, and it is exciting to discuss this on a fellow fashion platform.”

Nick Knight speaking to Vogue.com on his upcoming FASHION PIONEERS interview with The Business of Fashion. A few remaining tickets to attend this special live event in London are available here.

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.

As with previous Fashion Pioneers interviews, the event will be streamed live to thousands of viewers around the world, with live questions from Twitter (please use hashtag #BoFlive), bringing the BoF community together in a virtual conversation about the future of fashion communication.

We are making a limited number of tickets available to BoF readers who would like to attend in person.  Our last event with Natalie Massenet sold out in three days, so please click here to purchase your ticket now.

Fashion Pioneers is brought to you exclusively by The Business of Fashion, in association with The Hospital Club, and will be filmed and streamed live to viewers around the world by Pundersons Gardens

Tramps, Past, Present & Couture - Dior Couture A/W 2001 | Source: SHOWstudio

LONDON, United Kingdom — For many fashion companies, 2009 was the year the internet arrived. In the face of an unprecedented economic crisis and overwhelming evidence that affluent consumers are highly active online, senior executives across the industry are finally starting to embrace digital media with a new strategic seriousness.

There was no better sign of this than the impressive gala held during London Fashion Week to celebrate fashion website SHOWstudio and its groundbreaking exhibition at Somerset House, “Fashion Revolution.”

When it was launched by photographer Nick Knight in November of 2000, SHOWstudio was ahead of its time. Indeed, “Fashion Revolution” celebrates nine years of restless experimentation and digital innovation. But for the majority of brands, retailers and publishers, who are still struggling to understand the radical impact the internet is having on fashion communication, the retrospective also offers urgent lessons for the present. We think it’s a must-see for executives, creatives and editors alike.

The exhibition is organised around three main themes – Process, Performance, and Participation – that are each integral to understanding how digital media is different and what that means for the future of fashion communication.

PROCESS

The openness of the internet has given consumers access to the behind the scenes of fashion like never before. From the beginning, SHOWstudio understood and embraced the transparency inherent in the new medium, inviting their online audience to consume the creative process of fashion, not just the end product. Many of these early experiments are documented in “Fashion Revolution.”

As far back as 2004, a SHOWstudio project called Power of Witches, developed in collaboration with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, laid bare the entire creative process around a shoot for the Autumn/Winter 2004 issue of AnOther Magazine in a live three-day webcast.

In Phonecarte, another project in the exhibition, SHOWstudio asked models Karen Elson, Lily Cole, Irina Lazareanu and Lily Donaldson to record voicemails as they shuttled between fittings, shows, after-parties and hotel rooms during the hectic fashion week season. Streamed on-demand over the internet, the recordings gave consumers unprecedented personal access to the first hand experiences of the world’s top models at work and play in New York, London, Milan and Paris.

As increasingly influential bloggers armed with laptops and web-enabled cameras follow in the footsteps of SHOWstudio’s experiments, expectations amongst consumers are evolving. No longer content to merely purchase finished products, they want more immediate, insider access to the people and creative process of the fashion industry. We think it’s time for forward-thinking brands to open up their organisations and deliver.

PERFORMANCE

According to Nick Knight, SHOWstudio’s live fashion shoots sometimes became more conscious “performances,” with the photographer, the stylist, the designer, and the model all taking part. As part of their exhibition at Somerset House, SHOWstudio has placed an active photo studio inside a room-sized glass case and invited the public to watch the action unfold, as imagemakers including Jason Evans, Alice Hawkins, Craig McDean and Sølve Sundsbø shoot fashion editorial and portraits.

During the course of the exhibition, Mr. Knight himself will appear in the live studio space to photograph “100 of London’s Beau Monde,” including models, actors, musicians and artists. But what’s perhaps most interesting about these “performances” is the crucial role they played in the development of a new kind of fashion experience: the fashion film.

Between 2005 and February 2009, Nick Knight and Ruth Hogben, then his assistant, documented Mr. Knight’s shoots for magazines like British Vogue and uploaded the results to SHOWstudio. Ms. Hogben was charged with capturing and editing the footage. But with Mr. Knight’s support, she soon started experimenting with her edits and adding music to the visuals.

In 2008, at the side of a landmark shoot for British Vogue’s December issue, they filmed models Lily Donaldson and Jourdan Dunn in some of the most sensational clothing of the decade. Called “Fantasia,” the final edit was simple, but provocative. It appears in the exhibition alongside a selection of captivating short films that use movement and music to communicate fashion in a way that static editorial simply can’t.

What began as simple documentation is, today, on the verge of becoming something much bigger. Pioneered in experiments like “Fantasia” and powered by video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo, fashion film has emerged as the most influential new format for fashion communication. Powerful brands like Yves St. Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Chanel have used the format to complement runway shows and accompany advertising campaigns. But that’s just the beginning.

Bringing together fashion, film and music, this new format is going to explode. According to ABI Research, by 2012 the number of broadband video consumers will surpass one billion. As viewership skyrockets and marketers continue to move dollars online, we predict the industry will see a seismic shift away from stills towards short fashion films, with brands competing to create compelling video content of their own. This will be especially true as companies set their sights on millennials, an entire generation of young fashion consumers who expect their world to be instant, dynamic and online.

PARTICIPATION

The internet is also an inherently participatory medium. While magazines were essentially one-way monologues to mute readers, the internet allows dialogue and exchange, with and amongst consumers.

Right from the beginning, SHOWstudio gave their viewers a voice, encouraging them to respond, discuss and contribute. In a project called In Camera, SHOWstudio let a global audience pose live questions to interview subjects like Kate Moss, Björk, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood, giving users rare and privileged access to engage with key creative figures at the top of the industry. Another project called “24 HRS” let consumers influence the narrative of a short film for Stefano Pilati’s Edition 24 collection for Yves Saint Laurent, while “Dress Me Up, Dress Me Down” invited viewers to style model Liberty Ross for a live photo shoot.

Today more than ever, people want to be part of the action. And according to a study by market researchers Forrester, luxury fashion consumers are more active than most. Not content to be passive spectators, they are twice as likely to participate online. We think fashion companies should take a more open and collaborative approach with consumers and create interactive content that lets them participate and engage with the brands they love.

“We are in the midst of a revolution,” says Nick Knight. As fashion brands study and seek to capitalise on what Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts calls the “digital tsunami,” we think understanding the three P’s – Process, Performance and Participation – is an essential precursor to effective action.

An afternoon at Somerset House is probably the best place to start.

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution on view until 20 December 2009 at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA.

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

Watch in High Quality at SHOWstudio.com

LONDON, United Kingdom — Digital fashion film has gained real momentum over the last couple of seasons. Using sound and movement to communicate fashion in a way that’s emotionally charged, cost-effective and easily distributed, the format has been adopted for online editorial and fashion week presentations alike. But it’s important to remember that new formats are only as successful as the image-makers and stylists who embrace and sustain them with their creativity.

Over the last year, on the strength of two breakthrough films for Gareth Pugh, London-based Ruth Hogben has emerged as one of the most influential and passionate young filmmakers working in fashion film today. It’s a genre she helped to pioneer while assisting Nick Knight between 2005 and February 2009, both as his first photographic assistant and editor of his fashion film projects for SHOWstudio.

With her third major film — a short for Christopher Kane’s highly anticipated new Topshop collection — due to launch during London Fashion Week, BoF recently caught up with Ruth to talk about her first experiments in film, the power of sound and movement, balancing concept with clothes, the importance of the internet, and her hopes for the future of fashion film.

BoF: Let’s start at the beginning. When did you first start experimenting with fashion film?

At the very beginning of my work with Nick Knight, I spent about two days writing down timecodes for a project on SHOWstudio. It was called Editing Fashion and it was basically about 8 hours of footage sent out to different editors. There was a porn editor, a wildlife editor, a Hollywood director. It just opened my eyes and I thought: “This is such an exciting medium!”

Nick used to film everything for copyright reasons and for his archives. And one day, I picked up a video camera and started filming beside him. The very first film I made was called Beasting. It was with Simon Foxton and John Galliano’s A/W ’07 menswear collection. I had half a day with an editor, teaching me how to use Final Cut Pro, and I’ve just been working at it and trying to embrace my mistakes ever since. I started out wanting to do photography, but at the end of two years, I realized I’d been spending every single evening and all weekend shooting and editing films.

BoF: How did you move from documenting photo shoots to making your own films?

I guess I was always frustrated shooting on the side of Nick’s shot because you don’t get somebody looking down your lens, they’re always looking at the side of the lens. But we did Hussein Chalayan’s show about four or five seasons ago, and we did something for Bernhard Willhelm. It all felt really exciting at the time and we were learning quite a lot. We did lots of stuff on SHOWstudio like 24 with YSL.

But the first time I felt that I was actually able to understand the medium properly was when I did the films for Gareth Pugh. “Insensate“ was a film that I made with Nick on a Dazed & Confused shoot with Gareth. When I first started thinking seriously about fashion film, the only thing in my head was Gareth’s clothes.

BoF: Your films for Gareth are stunning. “Insensate,” as you mentioned, accompanied the cover shoot for Dazed & Confused’s October 2008 issue, while your second film screened during his Autumn/Winter 2009 presentation in Paris. What’s the difference between creating a film for editorial and a film for a fashion week presentation?

The pressure is very different! I spent about three months on the “Insensate” film, while I spent five days on the presentation. You have to wait until the clothes are ready, so I shot it in a day and edited it in four days. The difference is the adrenaline and the pressure, like “I’ve got to get this finished and there’s going to be Suzy Menkes watching this and hating that it’s a film!”

That’s the thing you’re up against. You’re removing your audience from the clothing. Unless the clothes have dimension like Gareth’s that let you use film to your advantage. You wouldn’t have been able to see that balloon ladybird coat as well on the catwalk. It worked really well on film. But to show a film is not easy. The journalists and the editors and the stylists, they all want to see the movement, the textures, the colours. So I think it was quite brave of Gareth.

BoF: It must be quite difficult capturing detail and texture. What are the challenges of communicating clothing on film?

When I start to do a film, it’s always led by the clothes. As you say, the challenge is textures and making the right movement for the right piece of clothing. If you’ve got something really strong and solid in front of you then it’s got to be a very different movement and direction to what you’d do if you have a see-through dress. Just like a fashion photograph, everything is led by shape, movement, style and the woman inside the dress.

BoF: Some fashion films are more like moving photos that really focus on the clothes, while others are more narrative and focus on communicating a more abstract concept or mood. Where on the spectrum do you think fashion films are most successful?

I think the most successful films, just like the most successful photographs, are the ones that are from someone’s heart and are passionate and understanding. Film is such a vast medium. But for me, I like the idea of a fashion film being like a picture, but moving.

You can have a film that has a story and words. But I like the idea of it being more about the clothes and more about the motion. But it’s quite hard to know. One day I might want to do scripts!

BoF: How does shooting movement and sound impact your approach to casting? Have you ever considered using dancers or other types of performers instead of models?

If it was right for the clothes and the film. But if you get to work with someone like Lily Donaldson or one of the other great models, their hands and feet and legs and arms: it’s elegance from start to finish.

When you’re watching Lily on the side of a Vogue shoot, when she’s not in front of the camera for stills, she’s just absolutely incredible. It’s complete performance. If you’ve got a great model, the movement in between positions is what you use for the film and it’s going to be exquisite.

I think fashion films are really exciting for the new young models, because they’re the generation that are on the internet and are looking at clothes online and it’s not just stills anymore. They’re the ones sharing stuff on Twitter and YouTube. So it’s exciting for them to know that their shoot is part of a whole new fresh medium.

BoF: Of course, moving images have been around since the late 19^th century. What do you think makes “fashion film” a new medium? What role has the internet played in its development?

There’s been a lot of experimentation over the years. There are loads of experimental films by fashion photographers like Guy Bourdin. But he didn’t really have a platform. Basically in the past, companies haven’t been able to afford to put these types of films on cinema screens or they haven’t always been able to afford TV advertising.

But now, because of the internet and because of places like SHOWstudio and Style.com, there’s a platform. Net-a-Porter are playing films now! Everybody’s just sort of realizing that it doesn’t have to be still and I think people are realizing how incredibly powerful that is.

BoF: People sometimes draw parallels between fashion films and music videos. Do you think there is potential for crossover between the two?

The difference is, what should lead a music video is the lyrics and the music and the beat, while the lead for a fashion film is the clothes. I’m not sure I’d like it if the genres ever crossed. I’d like to think that fashion film is strong enough not to look like music video, and not to look like anything else but it’s own genre.

I also think it’s really important that whoever is filming or editing a fashion film actually understands what a pencil skirt means to a woman, or what ankle socks communicate. All those little things.

BoF: What is the future of fashion film, for your work and as a medium?

I think everybody is still learning how to make a good fashion film and what it means to make a fashion film. I’m spending all my time and energy making fashion films. So I hope as a medium it blossoms into its own niche in the market.

If you’re making an 8 minute film, then somebody’s actually got to be quite interested. It’s not as immediate as a photograph you can digest in 2.4 seconds. But if it’s made the right way, the communication can be really powerful.

I’d like to make my films about equality and women being powerful and intelligent and not always just being sexual. You put movement and music to something and it’s got so many different facets and layers to it, that what you’re saying almost has to be deeper. It’s got more depth to it. You can say so much more with 30 seconds than you can in a single frame.

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

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.