Surf’s Up
We love being able to buy fashion from our phones while we’re in bed, at the pub or even on the bus! But do mobile apps and online stores mean the fashion industry is becoming less exclusive? Bel Trew speaks to the experts to find out…
THE FOUNDER
Sarah Curran, My-Wardrobe.com
‘Shoppers are able to click-to-buy straight from the catwalk. Online is a very exciting place to be’. Sarah started as a sub-editor at The Times, before setting up Powder boutique in London and my-wardrobe.com in 2006. Within three months, it was outperforming Powder sales, so she went exclusively online. Although Powder was successful, when Sarah moved to France and wanted to start a family, she played with the idea of a website. High-end online shopping and cheap fast fashion were already covered, but she realised that no website specialised in everyday-luxury – a very ‘now’ trend. So she took the plunge and my-wardrobe.com was born.
One of the biggest problems she faced was that luxury had always been treated as an experience when it came to shopping. How would you compensate for on-hand assistants, mood lighting and dressing rooms on a website? ‘I created an online shopping destination with exceptional customer service that felt luxurious from the moment you logged on, to the package arriving,’ Sarah explains. What about the plush fitting room? ‘The returns policy,’ Sarah answers. What could be more luxurious than trying on the clothes in your own home? If it doesn’t fit, send it back.
Sarah argues luxury online websites win because it provides services you can’t get in a store. Etailers do more than mimic high street shopping. ‘Online you can have live webchats with designers and virtual fitting rooms,’ she adds. ‘You can have shows streamed live and shoppers are able to click-to-buy straight from the catwalk, and with mobile apps. Online is a very exciting place to be right now.’
They’ve certainly played with the boundaries at my-wardrobe.com. They have editorial trend features, style advisors to hand, a separate magazine, an online community forum and click-to-buy TV, called my-TV that demonstrates how to wear the fashion you’ve bought. Online shopping is like having Gok Wan, a department store, YouTube and a full magazine editorial team at your disposal without even leaving your bed!
But it hasn’t been easy, particularly as online retail is still relatively new. She was lucky to have started on the high street, so encouraged the existing labels she stocked in Powder to join the site. ‘It took time to > reassure designers about selling their items online,’ she admits. Another problem is that consumers can’t handle the clothes physically. A lot of work has to go into presenting the items online. ‘We shoot every item in-house, styling each piece as a full outfit,’ explains Sarah.
My-wardrobe.com has a full editorial team who work very closely with the buyers, in order to understand every piece in the collection ‘from the style, fit and fabric to how to wear it’. This is then fed into the trend reports and the clothes descriptions. Some etailers even provide catwalk videos of each item. ‘Online media has also brought an instantaneous expectation from consumers. They don’t want to have to wait for collections to drop into stores, they want it now,’ explains Sarah.Etailers are driving this trend.
Online shops are even affecting what the fashion houses do themselves. Why else were the Pre-Fall or CruiseCollections created? Online shopping is a high street that’s open 24 hours a day, every day, anywhere. Two collections every six months just doesn’t cut it. For Sarah, the future is definitely online. Media, technology and the retail experience will ‘blend to become seamless’ feeding our need for instant gratification.
We want more and we want it faster, so technology provides that desire. Designers, however prehistoric, will just have to deal with it if they want to stay ahead of the game.
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