doug ordway for versace
Overnight Versace showed its SS10 menswear show in Milan. Inspired by the French Foreign Legion, the hallmark looks of the largely desert-toned collection were the safari suit, a series of loose djellabah shirts, many of them dip-dyed, and the now de rigueur manbag. In Versace’s case, this included both the megatote and the duffle bag, right down to small, square leather purses, worn belted at the hip. Below is a video of the collection from, once again, the good folk over at LA Times blogs. And just as well that someone had their eye on the social media ball at Versace, because in spite of the suggestion that Versace was “fully embracing the digital era”, including the promise of "doggie cam" - that's right, a camera-enabled pooch - Versace’s so-called exclusive live-streamed backstage access turned out to be rather confusing.
Is there anything at all on the Versace website? No.
Instead, there is a series of uncaptioned photos on the Twitter feed of Doug Ordway.
Who is that exactly? Ordway is a photographer who says he does a lot of work for Versace.
A few images of the hair & makeup stage were posted on Twitter prior to the show. The bulk of the images were however posted long after the show had wrapped - with no captions whatsoever.
Ordway also shot three maximum 30 second backstage videos backstage which also went up after the event (see below).
Another site called Ftape, which calls itself the "Ultimate Online Fashion Resource" - and whose connection to Versace is unclear – appeared charged with the role of promoting Ordway's coverage via its website and Twitter.
And at least Ftape has done a good job of aggregating all of Ordway's photos and video together in the one spot. But you had to really know what you were looking for to find it.
Perhaps the doggie-cam - and also touted model-cam - footage is to be used at some later date.
Memo to Versace: YouTube is not live-streaming video. Nor is uploading a gazillion photographs hours after the event.
It’s great that more and more fashion companies are interested in getting into social media and providing their audiences with content.
But try taking a leaf out of Dolce e Gabbana’s book.
Dolce e Gabbana manages to aggregate all its content under the Dolce e Gabbana umbrella.
The company does have a spinoff, magazine-style website - Swide - which pumps out a lot of exclusive content. Granted, the site has a rather baffling name - which, judging by its low Twitter follow count may confuse people. But at least Dolce e Gabbana is serious about social media and has dedicated resources to it.
And furthermore, of course, Dolce e Gabbana actually live-streams its runway shows to the net as they happen.
2 comments:
I see man clutches. Everywhere.
hello....I am Doug Ordway the photographer of Versace backstage event. This was my first attempt to use all the popular networking media to connect with backstage. Do to some technical reasons, things did not get posted as quickly as anticipated. My claim was a "direct connect" as I have a great working relationship with Versace for almost 20 years, and am able to have all access. Some misunderstood this as meaning "Live", which I never claimed knowing the nature of backstage at fashion show! I went into this with many ideas of what we could do & was prepared for them all. In the end, the actual fashion show is the most important. Anything that can hinder that is not allowed by the powers that be, who make those decision at that instant. Much was learned from this first attempt, as this was the initial trial run. We hope to be back doing the same for the women's shows in September, with many of the bugs eliminated. Stay tuned!
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