Biography
Alexandra Van Houtte is the founder and chief executive of Tagwalk, a searchable database of lookbook, runway and street style image collections that shaves hours off the usually laborious role of bloggers and assistants creating moodboards and trend forecasts.
Born to French and British parents, Van Houtte first studied Mandarin at the University of Nottingham before going on to do a masters in Fashion Media Styling at London College of Fashion . In her first five years working in fashion, predominantly working as a stylist for the likes of Elle, Numéro and Grazia, Van Houtte experienced first-hand the task of finding specific trends and styles across the plethora of runway images and lookbooks out there.
She launched Tagwalk in 2016 to solve this problem. Dubbed “the Google of fashion” by publications including the Financial Times and Refinery29, Tagwalk allows users to search for images by colour, fabric or trend keyword, as well as typical filters such as season, fashion week, designer and model.
As of September 2019, Tagwalk had 46,000 registered users and in April 2019 the site launched video production for brands. Tagwalk counts Carmen Busquets as an angel investor. In 2018, Vanity Fair named Van Houtte one of the 50 most influential French people in the world.