Covent Garden is well on the way to becoming a proper fashion destination. While Neal Street has been hipster central for a while (home to American Apparel, Dr Martens, Urban Outfitters), King Street is aiming to be something of a Bond Street for secondary lines. Burberry Brit is already firmly positioned, and now, slotted between it and the Apple store is Ralph Lauren’s Rugby. (more…)
Kurt Geiger has just launched its own, very slick blog called Everything But The Dress to tie in with the rebranding of its stores as a one stop accessory shop. What’s clever is that Everything But The Dress is hosted on the Nowmanifest.com platform, a space where literally a handful of (uber)blogs reside.
As I understand it, Bryanboy, Fashion Toast and Style By Kling get a share of any ad revenue generated on Nowmanifest and in return, Nowmanifest gets the combined traffic of these blogs and gives them all a uniform look. Instead of placing a generic ad on Nowmanifest, Kurt Geiger has created its own blog (written by a character called Scarlet) and (presumably) paid to have it sit amongst the blogging elite, basking in their glow.
This is a much more discreet and credible way to do advertising, a genuinely engaging way to merge editorial and advertorial without obviously shoving product down the reader’s throat. It’s the first time I’ve seen advertorial approached like this. What do you think?
London Fashion Week may not be based in South Kensington any more but there’s still plenty of reason to head that way this month. In addition to the V&A Reading Rooms September Sessions (where the lovely Malika Dalamal from DailyCandy will be giving a talk on 22nd September), there’s an excellent new free exhibition at the V&A. (more…)
