Fashionoffice Insight by Karin Sawetz, 23 January 2015

What are the signs of the internationality of a city's fashion week? Live streams or/and online TV coverages!

fig.: The image shows me during my endurance training on my bicycle.

Internet in the early days was like endurance sports. What counted was the greater staying power.

In our days, even the French offer online TV coverages from Mode à Paris - and also in English language! Why I'm mentioning the French? Because at the beginning of the commercial use of the internet, many publishers (included are photographers with their websites) experienced the differences between the copyright laws in US and EU partly in a morally reprehensible way. Everybody knew at that time that internet will change our society and that the intentions should count and law has to go with the society and not against. The application of old laws on new media in the 1990s in a global state community was also an action against new publishers to stop or hinder them growing quicker.

Today, we are quasi 'over it' and people around the world have the opportunity to attend the events via computer. (By the way: Copyright infringements concerning the look of clothing items can't be fought out easily in court when it's more about a fashion trend or style and not technically argueable; and if a court decides that somebody has stolen a fashion trend, the basic question is: why should the - in the mentioned case accredited - US publisher or photographer carry the guilt when somebody sews or knits after a picture only because it appeared online? On printed paper, the publication of the images would have caused no troubles.)

In most cases, fashion weeks today provide live streams such as the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks (latest happened in Berlin from 19 to 22 January) or Milan Moda Uomo (17 to 20 January). At this time, the most interesting online destination is ParisModesTV which covers the running men's wear shows Fall/Winter 2015/16 such as the one from yesterday with runway views and interview with Phillip Lim about his inspiration he derived from mountaineering - also an endurance sports.

Via Fashionoffice's FashionFeeds, selected shows and news are posted - as timely as possible.


more survey>