Wednesday, February 20, 2013

LFW AW13: WHEN VINE CAME TO LIFE

Posted by Bethan Holt, Junior Fashion Editor at Large

Do you remember a world before Vine? A world where the mere Twitpic reigned as the way to share photos easily on Twitter. Obviously, we're not forgetting Instagram, but following some kind of techy bust up there was no easy way to share those vintagey shots with your Twitter followers. Then 24th January came and the Twitter bigwigs officially unveiled Vine, a new app where we could record six second, stop motion mini films. Conveniently, this came just as the fashion industry was gearing up for a big month of AW13 shows which basically meant an excellent opportunity to pioneer the use of Vine in a fun fashion context. There was big competition to live up to as well, after Calvin Klein created some genius Vine posts showing man supermodel of the moment Matthew Terry working out in CK underwear during the Super Bowl. At NYFW, fashion got into the Vine groove with some great videos, the best ones being posted from the front row (any further back and people's hair gets in the way) and backstage. The Cut put together the edit of the best New York fashion week Vines.


Since the lights are still out...  


At the press conference which opened London Fashion Week, Caroline Rush and Natalie Massenet spoke about their six point plan for British fashion. One of those focuses is digital innovation, and in the  next breath Rush was telling us about Net-a-Porter's hook-up with Matthew Williamson, who would be giving previews of his show and behind the scenes snapshots using the Vine app and #MatthewMagnified. Now, Matthew Williamson rather savvily recently recruited Rosanna Falconer, formerly of the BFC, as his Head of Digital which somewhat explains why he was so quick to jump on and exploit the new app. Topshop got on board too, a move which is hardly surprising given that it is pushing social technology in every possible way. It's not just designers who got behind Vine at LFW; us journos and bloggers had fun with it too. Some of LFW's most prominent Viners included The Telegraph fashion team, i-D,  Pop, The Times' Hannah Rochell, Business of Fashion and Charlie Porter.  I even had a go at a few shows. There are frequent complaints on Twitter about the blurry pics which people post from fashion shows- why bother if you can't see anything? Is it just to prove you're there? Those very same problems arise with Vine. I've also found that although six seconds might not seem like long, the best vids have at least three "takes" rather than just one lasting the whole six seconds. Or is that just a terrifying indication of the brevity of my attention span?

Here is a nice selection of LFW Vines. Have you seen any better ones? Will you be using Vine?


Holographic beads lighting up 's last look 





Some  exits. Loose, louche, clothes to feel cool in

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