Amber Gordon is combining fashion, art, editorial, e-commerce and social media with the launch of interactive digital destination Imagine Fashion
DIGITAL
Q&A Amber Gordon, Founder, Imagine Fashion
This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit
Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
Amber Gordon is combining fashion, art, editorial, e-commerce and social media with the launch of interactive digital destination Imagine Fashion
The lines between commerce, editorial, advertising and brand content have become unprecedentedly blurred, as the luxury industry champions the art of collaborating fashion, film, mobile and multimedia. Technology emerges to integrate the social, commercial and entertainment elements of our digital lives, whilst advertising becomes powerfully personalised as brands capitalise consumer psychographics, made readily available by the advent of social media.
As remarked by Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO of Story Worldwide: “Marketing has entered the post-advertising age. The new age’s defining feature is this: The only messages anyone will see and hear are the messages they choose to see and hear.” As a result brands are beginning to understand the importance of developing content for consumers to seek out and share, and enlisting the powers of Martin Scorsese to David Lynch to help give their brand a story.
“ Brands have come to realise that the most engaging composition for the digital space is something moving, not something still ”
From the evolution of print magazines to e-zines to shoppable online publications, luxury is now witnessing the rise of video commerce, extensively interactive content, full sensory digital experiences and, in the near future, digital billboards that have the ability to profile passers-by and tailor their advertising to the viewer.
Arriving in a timely manner, the recently launched Imagine Fashion combines the video magazine concept, as a monthly editorially focused format, incorporating e-commerce, mobile commerce and shareability on social media and featuring of-the-moment creative’s and models. To discover more about the digital luxury climate, we caught up with Amber Gordon, the founder of the recently launched Imagine Fashion, an interactive luxury fashion film destination engineered for the digital and mobile environment.
How did the concept for Imagine Fashion come about?
iF was conceptualised 4 years ago out of the creative frustration as a stylist working in a restricted print medium and was originally conceived in a TV format. For a year however Imagine Fashion stood still and stayed on paper without much development. During that time, I became more and more interested in the digital and mobile space, at which point the direction changed and then took shape. [In the coming years] we want to grow Imagine Fashion to its full global reach and potential offering as a company platform.
Tell us about why the luxury industry has only recently truly embraced digital video
For so long now, the luxury industry has veered away from the digital space. Film however has provided a medium where luxury brands can embrace an engaging format that is current and forward thinking, whilst still maintaining a brand’s aesthetic integrity. Brands have finally come to realise that the most engaging composition for the digital space is something moving, not something still. Therefore something film, not photographically based.
What do you think brands are trying to achieve through this new content? Who is doing it particularly well?
Brand awareness, experimentation and presence in the digital space, a whole array of brands, from the more established to younger and emerging, are adopting a film format for their seasonal presentations and for marketing purposes. I personally have been inspired by the experimental freedom on SHOWstudio, which gives a platform to many fashion photographers who also direct. Imagine Fashion offers photographers/directors an editorial home for their fashion film work. We have already collaborated on our first two original films with Francesco Carrozzini and Dusan Reljin. I look forward to collaborating with many others in the near future, in particular directors such as Zoe Cassavetes, Johan Renek and Zac Gold who are all incredibly talented directors with unique voices.
What makes for engaging brand content?
Imagine Fashion does not create as our core offering branded films, we create interactive shop-and-share editorial film content. We do however offer this as a marketing and partnership solution for brands. Whatever we do, it is important to maintain the art, creativity and editorial essence in our content. For me film pieces need to grasp you in some way and be engaging, whatever that hook may be. Stylistically the film piece has to be visually beautiful, beauty obviously comes in different forms and is not always conventional. The magic is to find that beauty, whatever it is.
Do you think fashion is at risk of moving too far into the media space?
I think in the digital space there is the potential for creative media and e-commence and to live as one. It is exactly for this reason that Imagine Fashion exists. In other words, the inspirational beauty of editorial with the immediate gratification and benefit of all things digital, including being able to click, purchase and share all that you see.
What value do you feel this new form of marketing is adding to the consumer experience?
Imagine Fashion’s core offering is editorial which is not a paid for service. The interactivity that we offer replaces the shopping credits in magazines and is a natural progression for the digital space. The interactivity however can be applied to branded content too, which is exciting for the consumer, who can now enjoy a three dimensional experience and connect on a far greater emotional level with the narrative and the products that they are viewing.
Creative Strategist, Digital
Sophie Doran is currently Senior Creative Strategist, Digital at Karla Otto. Prior to this role, she was the Paris-based editor-in-chief of Luxury Society. Prior to joining Luxury Society, Sophie completed her MBA in Melbourne, Australia, with a focus on luxury brand dynamics and leadership, whilst simultaneously working in management roles for several luxury retailers.
