Who needs magazines anymore ?
Lookbook.nu describes itself as the internet’s largest source of fashion inspiration from real people around the world. It was inspired by street fashion blogs like the Sartorialist as well as “What are you wearing today?” forum threads across the internet. People can upload photos of their looks, and browse others, by brands (people tags their look), style, city, colors. So it does what a magazine do, but in a more powerful way. It’s a sort of VRM pattern, where you can find all the brands “in vivo”.
In a recent Interview about the Futur of Fashion conducted by Dirk Standen, Hedi Sliman, the famous ex designer for Dior Homme, gave a lot of interesting insights.
Can you envision a day when digital media will replace magazines?
I totally do, and I don’t see it as a bad thing. You don’t fight but embrace a natural evolution, really, and try to figure out how it would reveal new creative fields within global access, and multimedia features.
The Web site magazine will come way before the print version in the next decade. I don’t see any way around it, really. With the rise of the Internet, fashion did become part of the global entertainment industry in the last ten years, and will follow the digital evolution of the music or film industry.
Besides, immediacy is better than old news. The “manufacturing” process of a magazine is far too long for this world, for the definition and idea that fashion is about “right now.” I guess it is more about “right now” now than ever before.
That said, fashion magazines, glossy magazines still use their Web sites for daily news and information only. I trust it might be interesting to invest strongly in art direction, besides hiring top editors, top photographers, and top models, which is hardly enough for Internet pages.
Quite certainly, the Web sites of the magazines will have to move away from the “blog” format and create an inspiring, tight template for their photo productions or editorial content, a Web site that has the [same feeling of] luxury and glamour as flipping through a heavy glossy magazine.
It is interesting to think how someone like Alexey Brodovitch would have investigated this medium to create typography and layouts in motion. It is now an open field for a new generation of editors in chief and art directors.
The Democratization of Creativity is going to replace fashion magazines as marketing tool. So the question is, what’s the fonction and legitimity of this kind of print magazines now that they are offering obsolete brands exposure? What’s the value they create for their reader ?
I’m afraid but i can’t see nothing to help them.
