4 Ways That Social Fashion Startups Are Changing The Retail Industry

In October 1995, the phrase “fashionista” burst onto the national scene in an Associated Press article calling fashionistas “the fashion mafia”—people who fly to New York each year for Fashion Week. In a follow up story days later, The Washington Post added “(A fashionista is) the cranky son-of-a-gun in the Gucci loafers who wields clout and attitude like a silver stiletto.” As women around the world started connecting with each other using social networks such as Facebook and Pinterest, the influence around fashion became more democratic. Women began to share their own opinions and could now follow and inspire one another. The term “fashionista” grew to be more positive—and reflected anyone who influenced fashion through sharing their own style and opinions. “Fashionista” was mentioned 4 times in 1995 in major media, and more than 2,600 times so far in 2012 (according to Factiva). In some areas of our life (what movies to watch, or books to read, electronics to buy…), technology or algorithms have helped us make decisions, but in the fashion world algorithms don’t seem to be enough. Fashionistas want to inspire and be inspired by others. Startups enabling the fashion discovery have a new way of thinking. Instead of focusing resources on building the perfect algorithm (to say "if similar users like item X you might also like item Y because you have similar preferences") they focus on providing the infrastructure so that users are empowered to find their natural recommenders. The platform provides the means, users get the goal. With these new platforms, people and data are classified naturally by the social network mechanisms (followers, leaders, popularity ranking, automatic categories, user-created categories like Pinterest boards, etc.) and rewarding schemas for active users.