All Eyes on Africa

It's hard to say if the World Cup in South Africa is having an influence on fashion, but designers are definitely looking to Africa for inspiration.

Missoni Resort '11 style.com

Zulu Royalty from eshowe.com

Thakoon Resort '11

Jean-Paul Gaultier Fall '10 style.com

Wunderbloc: The Ultimate Online Guide to NYC boutiques

New York City is definitely a shopper's delight, but it can be a real challenge trying to keep up with latest and greatest shopping destinations. Enter Wunderbloc, an online directory of boutiques in and around NYC. Even if you're not in New York, the Wunderbloc site has great features like virtual tours and a marketplace, to provide you with the experience of shopping in New York from anywhere in the world.

One of the coolest things on the site is the 360 degree virtual tour, which includes high-quality 360 degree videos of the store interior. It also inadvertently provides a sneak-peek at the store offering.

The site also has an e-commerce section that allows you to shop products from many of the boutiques featured. There are varying amounts of pieces from select stores like Kaight, 20 Peacocks and United Nude. In addition to shopping by boutique, the navigation allows for shopping by neighborhood, which can be helpful if you would like to products from a variety of similar stores at once.

The Wunderbloc community is a place to connect with the city's fashion-obsessed and get personal recommendations on where to shop. You can also browse the gallery of photos for style inspiration.

Just like anything, Wunderbloc also has its drawbacks. Some parts of the site, like the reviews  and WunderblocTV, have not been updated some time, but for the most part it acts as a good introduction to the plethora of small boutiques in the city, and allows anyone to shop like a New Yorker, even if you're miles away.

Are You A Fashion Sellout?

It's an ugly question, one most of us would prefer not to answer, but after reading the post Fashion’s Biggest Sellout; You? by 39th & Broadway, I had to seriously question whether my appetite for fast-fashion might have more far-reaching consequences than just improving the finances of H & M, Zara and Forever 21. Everyone at one point or another has looked at a ridiculously low-priced garment and felt both the elation of finding a bargain coupled with the sinking feeling that it was probably made in less than ideal working conditions. Without any hard evidence, it's easy just to shrug off any thoughts of impropriety and go home with your new clothes: it's one thing to think that your clothes might be made in sweatshop and another to know that they are.

While weighing my fast-fashion dilemma, I came across the  BBC documentary series "Blood, Sweat and T-shirts." It follows six young people that love fast fashion as they work in the factories where these throw away garments are made. This program gave me great insight into a question that has been quietly nagging me: "how is it possible to make clothes for so cheap and still make a profit?" The answer, unfortunately, was just what I suspected:

Some Like It Hot: Vlisco Spring Collection

Photos: Vlisco

"Fashion is not always about what’s new, it’s also about what’s good."

- Alber Elbaz, designer, Lanvin

Rikke Jørgensen Exhibit

A few months ago, I did a post about talented Danish illustrator Rikke Jørgensen who has done beautiful work for fashion companies like Diesel, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus and Sigerson Morrison. Her work is now on display at the Sigerson Morrison Art Lab Boutique, 19 E. 71st Street (between Madison & 5th) in New York City until June 30, 2010. Limited edition t-shirts and totes featuring her work will also be available.

Read more about Rikke Jørgensen in the original post

A Step Closer to Virtual Shopping

One of the reasons that luxury brands  have been slow to embrace the internet is the difficultly of conveying the quality of a product on an e-commerce site. This is a challenge not limited to websites selling luxury goods, but for e-tailers in general. Although zooms and multiple views have been able to provide a better sense of what a product actually looks like, there is still a kind of virtual glass window between shoppers and online merchandise.

Video has been the next step in creating a richer e-commerce shopping experience and the full-screen videos on Dolce & Gabbana's Fall 2010 handbags microsite with extreme close-ups of each bag in 360 degrees, are the best I have seen so far. The videos are not just visually mesmerizing, but somehow also provide the experience of having gone into a store and picking up one of these handbags (with the exception of not feeling the material). An example is above, but I recommend going to the Dolce & Gabbana website if you would like to see what's next in online shopping. 3D and sensory technology for e-commerce seem a distant future, but these videos definitely bring online shopping one step closer.