Last night, The WSJ Magazine presented the Innovators of the Year at the MoMa in New York City. Innovators were awarded from the Art, Fashion, Technology, Design, Philanthropy, and Architecture categories.
Among the winners, a common theme was their commitment to sustainability and their long lasting effect on not just an industry, but the way we live. In stark contrast, the fashion category winner, Katie Grand, was recognized for her ability to create and interpret trends within the fashion industry.
Grand has worked alongside the likes of Marc Jacobs and Miuccia Prada, but can her innovative styling live on and change the way we live? The refinery29, for one, questions if she is really the most innovative in the fashion industry.
It is difficult to see how an innovator in the fashion category would be a “designer of sustainable fashion” or even a “creator of a sustainable/green fabric dying process”. It would make much more sense that the most innovative individual in the fashion industry is that person who is at the forefront of the circulation of fashion through digital means, mobile apps, and social marketing. Isn’t it passé for the fashion innovator to be someone who moves fashion trends from designer to runway and then to the print ads…we’re in the digital age!
Nevertheless, Katie Grand is the best stylist and thus an excellent marketer because she can work with the designer to present looks on the runway and later in print mediums that make up the beautiful glossies we all love to look at. According to NY Magazine’s Hadley Freeman,
A good stylist can boost a designer from unknown to international recognition faster than a celebrity endorsement.
Further, she says,
A stylist is to a designer what the builder is to the architect, or a music producer to a songwriter: the person who turns the creative idea into a tangible reality. A designer may sketch the clothes and make airy pronouncements that this season is all about satanic wood nymphs, but a stylist puts the clothes together and makes the wood nymphs commercially desirable. Most are unknown, but a few have emerged from the designers’ shadows.
There are more people than just the stylists who innovate within the fashion industry. Christopher Bailey of Burberry, for example, launched Burberry Body, whereby Burberry FB fans were given exclusive access to free samples and early access to purchase a bottle of the fragrance even before it was available in stores. Shortly before this notable product launch, Bailey led the first “Tweetwalk” during London Fashion Week.
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According to the WSJ the future of fashion is run by the curators, editors and stylists. My question is, can digital and social innovation in fashion be considered notable?
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