To plug into the hottest fashions a mere click of the mouse is all that’s required to access a plethora of webzines featuring news, views and sneak previews of everything on the high style front. Moreover, you can flick through photos a few hours after the last model has pivoted off the catwalk, and in some cases there are even video clips at your disposal.
Elle magazine’s online edition is among the Net’s most popular sites... and for good reason. It's as content rich as its paper version, and comes with many more “real-time” extras. Elle.com has beauty, fashion and lifestyle pages as well as the latest looks — straight off the catwalks of the world's fashion capitals. In addition, you can visit country-specific sites. Elle.fr provides all of the pages of the main magazine along with unique features like "Virtual Fashion," an interactive series of pictures photographed by Karl Lagerfeld. During fashion week, the site is updated daily with newsy tidbits and pix from 31 top défilés.
Style.com is just as slick as the paper editions of Vogue and W, the two leading magazines that produce this site.There's lots of news and commentary including a peek at on-the-pulse creations right off the catwalks of London, Paris and NYC, along with close-ups highlighting accessories, and a special section on American fashion with feature stories focusing on promising US designers on the rise.
For professionals interested in viewing current collections, there is no more comprehensive website than FirstView.com. About five years ago, the French Fashion Federation tried to bring its operations to a halt, crying “foul play” because they’d released unauthorized photos of Parisian high fashion creations.
Not only did they not succeed, but today First View — with it's pay-for photo pages and free archives — garners more than four million hits a day. Primarily targeted toward specialists, the site proposes a good number of photos from all the major fashion shows around the planet, available each season for an annual rate of $500 or $50 per catalog. Users can pick out new designers or collections, and view approximately 40 to 150 photographs. However, their archives are there for the rest of us to enjoy, free of charge.
Tomorrow’s rising stars — young, underground designers — are a natural match for vanguard webzines. Web62.com works in collaboration with fashionfoto.com to bring you an up-close, highly personal vision of international style. There are photos and videos of future celebs and their experimental output.
SoWear.com is a fashion collective dedicated to promoting emerging talent. None of the designers listed on this site are household names -- yet. This global destination allows promising designers, stylists, photographers, hair and makeup artists to interconnect, collaborate and explore potential resources.
And, just when you thought you'd seen it all... there's hint.com! This is the place for all the news no one else has the courage to print, pulled together in a column titled “Chic Happens: Who What and Wear News and Gossip.” You can even program your PDA to receive up-to-the minute info or someone else's modish blues or fash quips — in the style of: “Overheard backstage at Chanel” models joking about their “pet name” for Oscar de la Renta being “Oscar Pay My Renta.”
