I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern. All the womenswear designers I’m most excited about at London Fashion Week started out in menswear. Margaret Howell began with a handful of shirts, J W Anderson with his neurotic boy outsider references and Sibling with their subversive man-sized cashmeres. (more…)
So the new blogger-spokesmodel I mentioned last week? Bip Ling is the face of Forever 21, as it celebrates the opening of its third UK store. The three-floor London store opens at 360 Oxford Street on 27th July adding LA-style high street wares to the leggings and leotards of neighbouring H&M, Dorothy Perkins and French Connection stores.
As I mentioned before, the appeal of a blogger-model (Fashion Toast’s Rumi Neely has modelled for Forever 21 in the past) is they bring their personality, creativity and social networking savvy to the party. Multi-tasking Ling will not only be modelling for Forever 21 but also designing the windows. And probably Djing at the party, doing some vox pop interviews and covering the whole shebang on her blog.
An email just came in from a high street store announcing its new face for high summer and autumn/winter. Unfortunately, the news is embargoed til next week so I can’t name names but the model in question is a prominent UK blogger with attitude. Why is this interesting? Two reasons. One, it underscores the theory that models these days need more than good looks, they need personality. Models with attitude add extra energy to everything they do, they add their own stamp to the styling and make the pictures pop. Two, a blogger-as-spokesmodel is a pretty smart move on the part of the marketers. Bloggers have added value because they’re great communicators. They have a ready made platform to publicise the campaign – add together their blog, Twitter and Facebook followers and you have a pretty wide reach. (Hunter wellies obviously thought so when they signed up Liberty London Girl.) Bloggers also have entrepreneurial spirits so it will be interesting to see how the blogger-as-model trend develops. We’ve seen plenty of celebrities go from face-of to creator-of, let’s see if bloggers follow suit.
[Image credit: Karlheinz Weinberger]
Far too much fun was had at the launch of Mulberry’s coffee table book on day 2 of Luisa Via Roma’s Firenze4Ever, where we played with the giant gold Mulberry bag, got tangled up in bag-shaped balloons and decorated our own sponge cakes. (more…)
