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Staging a runway show at Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week is a costly privilege available to few designers who are not at the helm of established national or global brands.
Elsewhere in New York, however — in art galleries, restaurants, basements, garages, hotels and studios — young designers are cramming friends, retailers and whatever press they can get to see their own, more budget-friendly presentations. And several of them are incorporating digital technology to expand their audience beyond those in the room, just as larger brands have partnered with Livestream and YouTube to stream their shows live online.
We learned about two particularly creative uses this season. Earlier this week, we wrote about how young design label Timo Weiland hosted an after-party with mobile startup Fashism to engage a digital audience with the collection. Party guests were invited to try on clothes, some of which had debuted only hours earlier, and upload photos of themselves wearing those pieces straight to Fashism and, by proxy, Twitter, for real-time feedback.
Perhaps more inventively, designer and former Project Runway contestant Althea Harper partnered with live-streaming platform Watchitoo to engage with fans during her New York Fashion Week show last Friday.
For Harper, it was important not to “just film an event other people are at,” but to stage a show that put the digital audience first.
“I have a great fanbase coming from Project Runway, but a lot of people don’t live in New York,” Harper explained in an interview with Mashable. “I wanted to let them get in on the excitement, and to be able to interact more with them,” she said.
Throughout the event, which was hosted at Gallery Nine in Soho, Harper took questions via Twitter and Watchitoo’s chat widget, and in turn interviewed members of...
