It’s official. Tumblr has become the new It-place for fashion to be. Ranging from Aldo to McQ, from WWD to TeenVogue, numerous fashion brands and magazine count Tumblr as part of its digital repertoire. Having numerous “tumblogs“ myself, I understand the appeal of this new Twitter (although, to be absolutely accurate, I remember having a Tumblr why before even thinking about a Twitter handle). It’s like Twitter and Twitpic rolled up into one place with much more flexible layout configurations — almost like the love child of WordPress and Twitter. The good thing about Tumblr is that the content updates so fast that you can’t even afford to waste a blink. You can also choose to introduce new content from outside sources or simply scour the entirety of Tumblr to find ones that you like to “reblog” into your own collection.

 

Tumblr is really exploiting this new connection with the fashion industry. During New York Fashion Week, 20 bloggers who used Tumblr were chosen to be sent to New York in an attempt to show the fashion world that it’s serious about its fashion.  According to the article, about 180 of the top 1000 Tumblogs focus on fashion. Tumblr is starting to adapt to this new fashion phenomenon appearing on its horizon. With its newest site/interface update, Tumblr has introduced an “Explore” function and fashion “editors” picked out by its very own TumblrBot.

 

It is also quite official that fashion is in love with the iPad. Who can blame it? The sleekness that you can only get from Apple products plus the masses and masses of content targeted at the next fashion obsessed girl is bound to lure them other to the Apple side of life, not to mention it is feathery light and boasts countless designer covers (who doesn’t want to dress their newest gadget from head to toe in designer?). PR people are smart too. They know that if you are one to appreciate the calf leather cover for your iPad, you are most likely going to appreciate stylish apps that compliment your lifestyle. We all know that glossy magazines have been steadily migrating to the Apple store but did you know that other sides of this luxury diamond, such as Beauty (Clinique’s planned skin app), Travel (the ebutler at St Regis) and Auction (not eBay, Sotheby’s), have also embraced this new techno beat.

 

In this cyclical conundrum, you can’t really tell if fashion is chasing after technology or if technology is chasing down fashion.  I think fashion will always be looking for new ways to promote itself  – the plethora of live broadcasts we saw this runway season is a good example of fashion adapting to new technology. But I think that orginally with Blogging and now with Tumblr and sites like Nowfashion.com, different voices in fashion is trying to talk louder and have more relevant content. Personally, I find this change extremely refreshing. But if I can add in a little something that I learnt at school, it’s that nobody is able to predict how fashion will adapt to a new technology. Who knew that some microblogging site like Tumblr has become such an influence in fashion that it now has a Fashion Director on it’s board? I’m excited to see what the next new technology can dish up.

 

 

 
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Till next time,