The Fashion World is “pinning”

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Sweden: One of the leading countries in fashion

Lindex, Cheap Monday, and of course, H&M. The Swedish fashion industry is booming. Not only well-known fashion brands like H&M are becom-ing more successful, but the entire Swedish fash-ion industry is growing. So rapidly, that over the last five years, it has doubled its revenue, becom-ing one of the main cash-flows of the country.

So why are Swedish fashion brands so popular all over the world? One of the most important reasons is that Swedish fashion tends to be ‘clean’ and simple. Especially designer label ‘Acne’ owes its success to their elegant simplicity. Acne, which stands for ‘ambition to create novel expressions’, was one of the most popular brands at this year’s New York Fashion Week, due to their presentation of a modern, sleek spring/summer 2013 collection.

Tiger of Sweden is another great example of the beauty of Swedish fashion brands. The brand, which started out as a classical brand of men’s wear, expanded by introducing a women’s collec-tion a few years ago. Tiger of Sweden focuses on one aspect of fashion: the cut. The brand argues to have the best cuts, meaning that they promise that the clothes fit perfectly onto the buyer’s body.

Most famous of all Swedish fashion brands is, without a doubt, H&M. The brand, which has stores all over the world, is so successful be-cause of their business philosophy “offering you fashion and quality at the best price.” Al-though the price-quality relation of this brand is good, one must keep in mind that this is only because H&M continues to exploit developing

By Daisy Richelle Post

countries for the production of their clothes, for example, India and Bangladesh. Therefore, if you want to wear clothes that are authentic to Swed-ish values, its better to choose one of the other above mentioned brands. Because, although you will need to reach a bit deeper into your pocket, you will get far more value for your money, and you will stay true to one of Sweden’s imbedded philos-ophies: quality and functionality over fashionability.

 

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The fashion culture is ‘pinning’ over the world. How Pinterest helps to put fashion onto a whole new level

By Daisy Richelle Post

The Social Media Craze

During the last few years, social media websites have taken over the Internet. The use of websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram has been integrated into our daily life and the ‘posting’ of photos, ‘tweets’ and updates on these websites has become a daily task. Not keeping up with your activity on the web-sites will result into ‘social degradation’, meaning less followers and concerned family and friends who worry why you have been ‘offline’ for several hours.

The latest one to join to social media craze is the website ‘Pinterest’. The website, which houses a ‘vir-tual pinboard’, has gained immense popularity over the last year. The idea behind Pinterest is to gather inspiring images neatly into one place on different themed pinboards. The website came into exist-ence when its founder, Ben Silbermann decided to create a more practical way to organise one of his biggest hobbies: collecting nice images. The popular-ity of Pinterest shows that Ben Silbermann is not the only one who loves collecting nice images. Last month Pinterest reached over twenty million users.

Pinterest: Facebook For Women?

The first thing which can be noticed when ‘surfing’ over to the website, is that it is a social network that is mostly dominated by women. Even the lay-out of the website seems to targeted at women. It is then also no surprise that that ninety percent of the users are women. According to the organisa-tion, Pinterest is mostly used “to share recipes, offer weight-loss tips and plan weddings” and is therefore also commonly known as ‘the Facebook for women’.

Although all these things are done a lot on Pinter-est, there is one subject which dominates the web-site: fashion. Whether it is creating a board full of de-signer shoes or a board dedicated to winter-outfits, fashion is everywhere on Pinterest. Most ‘pinners’ use Pinterest to create imaginary closets and the most

used titles for pinboards are then also “my dream closet” and “get in my closet please.” But how does this relation between fashion and Pinterest work? Jes-sica, a 23-year old lawyer, was one of the first people to start using Pinterest, back when you still needed an invite to join Pinterest. During her time on Pin-terest, she has gathered over 400 ‘pins’ (images) on 7 different boards. Titles of her boards include “my style”, “products I love” and “wedding material.” Re-acting on the question how Pinterest influenced her fashion style, she stated that it is a constant in-spiration for her. “Pinterest gives me the ability to gather images of my favourite clothes in one digital place. It’s great. In the morning, when I’m doubting what to clothes to put on, I’ll just turn on my lap-top, go to my Pinterest boards and get inspired. Its made my life a lot easier and a lot more stylish.”

Not only does Pinterest offer practicalities, such as organising your favourite pictures and helping you de-cide what to wear, it is also a true community, where people with the same interests can find each other and connect with each other. Emily, a graduate student from Melbourne, Autralia says that her main reason for using the website is to get in touch with similar-minded people. “Since I recently moved to Melbourne, I now have more opportunities to meet people, because this is a big city. But before, when I was living in the Aus-tralian country, I barely got to see people. Pinterest opened up a world for me. Especially when it comes to fashion. Although it would have been very imprac-tical to wear high heels while horseback riding, I now can finally use my creativity on style in the big city. Pin-terest prepared me for this, and taught me fashion.”

Pinterest & The Booming Fashion Business

Women are not the only ones who are massively joining Pinterest. Brands and businesses are noticing the importance of the website as well. All sorts of companies have started to use Pinterest to promote their businesses. Rachel Tipograph, social media direc-tor at The Gap, states: “”I think for any company that has an e-commerce presence, they absolutely have to be paying attention to Pinterest.” Pinterest strongest point for businesses is its ‘referral’ option, meaning that on the website, people can click on an image they like and they will be directly referred to the original website of which the image was taken. This creates numerous options for brands and businesses, since people are able to immediately buy what they see. It is then also for this reason that the fashion world, in-cluding its most populare brands, are jumping aboard the Pinterest craze. Almost every well known fashion brand has a Pinterest account these days. American label GAP, for instance, started using Pinterest after it noticed that people were ‘pinning’ images of their fash-ion collections to their boards. Since then, GAP has created boards herself and hereby given customers the opportunity to directly buy the clothes they like.

In addition to boosting the sales of fashion brands, Pinterest also provides fashion labels with a perfect opportunity for brand marketing. John Donahue, di-rector of business strategy at the social media agen-cy Socialistic, argues that the Pinterest website can be used by brands to help customers engage with the brand. According to Donahue, a perfect way to do this is by posting ‘behind the scenes’ images of, for instance, photoshoots of the fashion label. In this way, the customer will feel included into the produc-tion process of the fashion clothes, and thus will also be more likely to buy items from the fashion label.

Heavenly or Dangerous?

All together, it seems that Pinterest is just too good to be true: for pinners, its a heaven for self-expression, creativity and connecting to other people, for fashion labels, its a true sales booster. But there might be a downside to the popularity of the website, since there are already some early rapports of people actually get-ting addicted to ‘pinning’. So will Pinterest be the next social media addiction, just as Facebook is for many of us? Pinterest inventor Bil Silbermann so far doesn’t seem to worry about it. He states “When people say that Pinterest is addictive, it often reflects just how passionate they are about what they are pinning. I’ve spent hours pinning up my favorite recipes because I love to cook, and I know people who have done the same for DIY projects, art, gardening, et cetera.”

So whether Pinterest is an addiction or a passion re-mains the question. One thing, however, is very clear: Pinterest is taking over the world, one pin at a time.

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