Vogue editor Wintour critiques Letterman’s socks (AP)
“Wintour, making her first appearance on CBS’ “Late Show,” made light of her image as an imperious and tough boss, but acknowledged that she is direct with her staff. “Well, I’m very decisive and I try and give very clear direction to the people that I’m working with, and sometimes, unfortunately, they don’t hear the answer that they would like to hear,” Wintour said.”

Online sales soar during July (Drapers)
“Online sales surged to £4.2bn in July as shoppers showed signs of renewed confidence. According to the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, July recorded around 15.7% more online sales than June, a 16.8% year-on-year rise.”

Prada quashes speculation it is seeking a partner (Drapers)
“A spokesman for the Italian fashion house said “there are no talks with anyone” following speculation Prada’s banks were seeking a partner to take a 30% slice of the group.”

Where the streets have no shame (Salon.com)
“The Sartorialist blog is an ever-evolving pictorial essay on the distinction between personal style and mere fashion. The former is a living, breathing element; the rest is just clothes. At last a selection of Schuman’s best images have been collected in one place, a book called, simply enough, The Sartorialist.”

NEW YORK, United States – Openly spreading the latest fashion gospel to an uninitiated crowd has always been anathema to the fashion elite. Until recently, this required fashion media to work a delicate balance between informing the mass public of the latest trends without being too direct as to make those new trends over-exposed and passé.

The internet — web 2.0 media and blogs, in particular — has been kicking down doors and fostering greater inclusion in most cultural fields. With fashion, the net has created unprecedented opportunities for fashion pedagogy, making old media look decidedly old-school.

So what’s an old media brand to do in this new environment? Men’s fashion bible GQ has responded with a web-offshoot called GQ Rules, possibly the greatest experiment in mass fashion teaching ever attempted.

Up until recently, good advice about menswear on the Internet was rare. Then, sites like The Sartorialist appeared, creating new interest in the way real men around the world are dressing, thereby dragging the leading edge of menswear away from fantastical and abstract magazine spreads and onto the reality of the streets. Thanks to Scott Schuman’s discerning eye, his genuine relationship with his readership, and fiery debate in the comments section, the site makes for engaging, addictive reading and even manages to teach a thing or two.

GQ Rules is an apparent response to both the proliferation of independent menswear fashion sites on the Internet as well as to the seemingly-record high interest in menswear at the moment. GQ Rules Director and producer Andrew Comer, however, does not see this as anything new: “GQ has been a reference point for men for over fifty years. We see GQ Rules as a logical extension of our longstanding mission.”

True to his word and GQ’s heritage, the new site sharpens its age-old message of proper gentlemanly style, while introducing its editors and philosophy to a whole new generation of men. Over the course of one month and under the tagline “How to Become a Well-Dressed Rebel in 30 Days,” Style Editor Adam Rapoport, Creative Director Jim Moore, and “Style Guy” Glenn O’Brien offer a daily three-minute video teaching the basics of men’s style. Viewers learn how to wear suits more casually with Band of Outsiders’ Scott Sternberg, how to style T-shirts with Gap’s Patrick Robinson, and how to pull off eccentric pocket squares with Derrick Miller from Barker Black.

Although nominally focused on “basics,” a few segments go off into extremely au courant specifics, which may leave some non-fashion types scratching their heads. Thom Browne personally introduces the concept of suited socklessness, and the editors also try to convince viewers that Patagonia down vests make perfect sense over wool suits.

The result has been an active and vibrant dialogue. GQ Rules videos have received thousands of comments — sometimes within minutes of posting, thanks in part to special promotion that allows participants to win a special gift card from J. Crew. This is a long way from the past, when magazines like GQ could create a monolithic direction on style without any rebuttals on the same page.

“The comments are both for other readers (to interact with one another about these topics) and for us (to learn, just as we would from print “letters to the editor”), says Comer.  “And we don’t shy away from disagreement—it’s not about consensus. It’s about engaging with our readers.”

Perhaps the comments were even too successful: who wants to sift through 4,100 one-sentence quips to find possible pearls of wisdom from peers? For future versions of GQ Rules, some functionality to provide peer-ratings on the most useful comments, as is seen on sites like Trip Advisor and YouTube, would help to make sure the cream of the comments rises to the top.

On the whole, however, GQ Rules is an excellent case study of how old media can embrace new media, by adding meaningful and useful content to the mix. After watching an entire month of these videos, studious newbies should possess the vocabulary and base knowledge to make informed fashion decisions and avoid common pitfalls.

What’s more, the site may be the warmest welcome ever for new consumers interested in high-end and hot indie fashion brands. With chic, yet accessible Adam Rapoport at the helm, even non-”fashion guys” can find an opening into cutting-edge style. Maybe they won’t go for ankle “cleavage” at first but they may learn to wear a scarf and wear the right kind of sneakers with a suit. 

Best of all, GQ Rules also proves a very important lesson about the current state of menswear: anything goes. In the videos we see American trad, British looks, Milano style, dapper Southern dandyism, and laid-back New York hipster cool all presented as acceptable options.

Individuality is all in the balance.

W. David Marx is a Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of MEKAS. Photo and video courtesy of GQ and men.style.com.

In the run-up to the Easter long weekend, which has already begun here in London, we thought we’d share some our new favourites for lazy Sunday reading from the ever expanding fashion  and business blogosphere.

JC Report
Not technically a blog, but now presented in a blog format, JC Report is one of the leading online authorities for thoughtful fashion content on the cutting edge. We’ve been working with Jason Campbell, JC Report’s charismatic founder, on restructuring the JCR value proposition, launching a newly designed site, and engaging JCR’s truly global fashion community. We’re delighted with the results: daily news, editorial and intelligence that you can’t find anywhere else.  The latest issue, released yesterday, features a denim hunter from London, shopping in Kuala Lumpur, and the masculine tailoring trend sweeping through the A/W women’s collections. For the next month, the JC Report site is being curated by photographer Miguel Villalobos. Congratulations to Jason and his team.

Wear Palettes
Who isn’t a fan of the Sartorialist? Well now, you can take things one step further to understand why Scott Schuman’s photos always seem to hit the right notes — colour notes, that is. Wear Palettes takes some of The Sartorialist’s best photos and distills the underlying colour palettes that make his photos so striking.

Tom Fishburne
During our time in business school, we were constantly entertained by the insightful cartoons by one of our enigmatic classmates which appeared in the student newspaper. I don’t know Tom personally, but came across his blog the other day, which provides clever insights in marketing and branding through the powerful medium of the cartoon.

Cartoon courtesy of Tom Fishburne and photos courtesy of JC Report, the Sartorialist, and Wear Palettes.

We have recently become addicted to a series of videos from TED — or, Technology, Entertainment and Design — an annual conference where passionate people descend on Monterrey, California to listen to other passionate people, each of whom are given 18 minutes to give the talk of their lives. The idea is that the best ideas will spread, by sheer virtue of the combined influence of all of the mavens and connectors in the room.

The notion of the idea virus also happens to be at the core of Seth Godin’s expertise. Godin gave this prescient talk at TED in February 2003 and declared to the world’s leading thinkers: "No matter what we do for a living, we’re in the fashion business!" 

What he  is getting at is that we in the fashion business know that it is the most remarkable ideas gain attention –  and every six months we are on the lookout for the freshest visions of how people want to dress and live today. Sometimes this may mean borrowing ideas from a different era and making them relevant for now. Nicholas Ghesquiere, a fashion innovator whose ideas influence both his high-falutin peers and the mass market alike, is a perfect example of this.

Godin also says marketing today is "not about interrupting people with full page ads," but this is a lesson that the fashion industry still needs to learn. Just flip through any fashion magazine and witness our worship of the full page glossy ad, even at a time when a recommendation from Susie Bubble, photograph from The Sartorialist, or endorsement from The Manolo can have much more weight at no cost at all — and simply because you are creating remarkable products.

While we suspect there will always be a role for advertising in the fashion business, smart fashion brands are also focusing on delivering a remarkable product that will get fashion people talking.

WWD reports today that Style.com has concluded an agreement to sell advertising on the Sartorialist blog maintained by Scott Schuman, a former fashion industry staffer who left a fashion sales showroom to create one of the best known blogs in the fashion blogosphere.

Women’s Wear Daily said:

A fashion label may get the best endorsement when its wares show up on a well-dressed city dweller photographed for fashion industry veteran Scott Schuman’s popular blog The Sartorialist. But for those who want more direct brand promotion, Style.com and Men.style.com will begin to sell ads forThesartorialist.blogspot.com beginning Sept. 1….

…The partnership is the first time the CondéNet properties have sold ads for a brand outside the company stable. Schuman’s blog, where he posts commentary on stylish men and women on the street, attracts more than one million unique visitors a month. He also pens a regular column for GQ and guest-blogs on Men.style.com and Style.com. "The Sartorialist reaches the person who really cares about fashion as a form of self-expression. He chronicles very chic people and his constituency are the people he photographs," said Dee Salomon, senior vice president of CondéNet. The site seeks to attract upscale automotive and consumer electronics as well as fashion brands. Style.com and Men.style.com and The Sartorialist will share advertising revenue generated from the blog. — WWD, 16 July 2007

This is, of course yet another sign of the increasing importance of fashion blogs as a communication vehicle for fashion brands, and it was smart of Scott to partner with CondeNet, who understand his demographic and who already have the advertiser relationships in place to generate ad sales.

Yet, having "upscale automotive and consumer electronics" ads next to Scott’s  eye-catching photos does raise some questions. Will they ruin the clean lines, aesthetic simplicity and fashion purity of the site?  Methinks it will be best to keep the ads focused on fashion and integrate them as cleanly as possible into Scott’s site, so as to maintain the integrity of what the Sartorialist’s 1 million monthly visitors are interested in: the photography.

Photo clip courtesy of Scott Schuman.

Fashion blogging
Any regular readers of this blog know that I have been a big fan of the Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, since I first came across his site almost two years ago. His was the first blog of any sort to really catch my attention because there was something really powerful about seeing clothes that are styled by real people on the street. It brings the clothes to life in a way that high-fashion editorial sometimes cannot.  FT does a great video profile of Scott that allows you to see how The Sartorialist came to be, explains how Scott thinks about his work and reveals that The Sartorialist is now receiving over 1.3 million page views per month. [You can see my own Sartorialist moment here]

The Sartorialist blog also opened my eyes to the potential of what the democracy of blogging could do for a fashion business, particularly emerging businesses with limited profiles and advertising budgets.  What if, for example, you could mouse over a sweater you like in one of Scott’s photos and could discover who designed the sweater and where you could buy it online through phototagging (just like you can tag people in your photos on Facebook.com)? Its Fashion 2.0 folks and its only going to get more interesting.

There is a lot more discussion of the fashion blogosphere is in this video overview narrated by Jeanne Beker, highlighting the pros and cons of the fashion blogging phenomenon, which some say has resulted in a reported 2 million fashion blogs. Jeanne speaks to some of the world’s leading fashion critics  (Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, Kate Betts from Time magazine, and Colin McDowell from the Sunday Times) to get their views on what blogging has done for them. She also speakss to the (love-him-or-hate-him) blogstar Perez Hilton.

Tom Ford’s new store on Madison Avenue
FT also gives us a peek into the much-discussed Madison Avenue flagship recently opened by Tom Ford, and heavily criticised by some observers for being too exclusive and too expensive. Tom Ford gives Jeanne a personal tour of the store which provides some of Tom’s own thinking on what he was trying to accomplish with the store. Jeanne does go through the price points in the store, which are truly astronomical,  including personalised underwear for $75.

Mentoring emerging designers
When emerging designers talk to me about setting up their own businesses, I often encourage them to try to get some time working in the studio of an established design house first.  This video outlines the mentorship of young proteges including Yves Saint Laurent (mentored by Christian Dior) to Francisco Costa (mentored by Calvin Klein) to Narcisco Rodriguez (mentored by Donna Karan). You can see how some of the industry’s biggest names of today started their careers as apprentices to some of the biggest names from yesteryear.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion. 
Scott Shuman photo courtesy of FT.

It was very smart of the NYT to supplement its traditional fashion coverage with this community concept through Horyn’s blog. It is the first successful execution I have seen on the NYT site to build a targeted community (read: loyal audience for advertisers) to take it beyond the transactional way most of us use to interact with news media. Instead of quickly digesting articles and then clicking somewhere else, readers are compelled to stay and engage each other in further discussion. This inevitably does lead to more clicks and return visits to the site, and much of it is driven through that oft-spoken-of concept of user-generated content.

I have been seeing this more and more on many news sites, including The Globe and Mail which enables comments for even its regular articles, through which sometimes hundreds of comments are posted. Style.com has also been working with the Sartorialist, who has a dedicated section on the site — though for some reason, people here don’t seem to be engaging as much — especially when compared to the passionate conversations on the Sartorialist’s own blog.

In a previous blog on the business of blogging, I spoke of how many fashion editors are being asked to write blogs in addition to their regular responsibilities. Not everyone is happy about it. But, having seen Horyn’s blog and the proliferation of new fashion content on the Internet, this seems to be the only way the traditional players are going to be able to keep up with the upstarts. However, it’s the old adage of "Content is King" that still prevails. Only so long as the content remains good will this strategy prevail. I look forward to seeing where Cathy takes the blog in the future.

Photo courtesy of Scott Schuman for Style.com.