Boutiques.com: Downunder's biggest fashion blogger buddies up with Google

gala darling

The countdown is on to tonight’s unveiling of Google’s new Boutiques.com fashion portal. After revealing the name and details of the site’s looks-matching technology, frockwriter thought we would hone in on one last, local, element: New York-based Kiwi Gala Darling. Frequently cited as one of the world’s most influential fashion/personal style bloggers - who calls her blog "The playgirl's guide to radical self love” and claims it boasts close to a million individual page views per month - Darling is one of a dozen fashion bloggers invited by Google to curate their own virtual fashion boutiques. Update 18/11: Now launched. Click (here) to check out her boutique and see who else is involved. Not bad for a magenta haired, tutu-rocking, tatt-emblazoned self-help dilettante, who launched into the blogosphere in December 2006 with a post entitled “Fashion help for recovering Goths”. Those in her native Wellington might know her better as Amy Paape. Reportedly a graduate of that city’s Chilton St James and Samuel Marsden Collegiate Schools, she moved to Melbourne in 2006, legally changed her name that year, then decamped to New York in 2008. Retail, as it happens, runs in the Paape family. Darling’s mother, Janet Paape, operates a Lower Hutt fashion boutique called She Designer Excitement, while her Porsche-racing uncle, Digby Paape, sells highend audio equipment at Bose Wellington. 

More Boutiques.com: You can also shop their looks for less

 
Yesterday frockwriter revealed the name of Google’s new fashion e-tail venture Boutiques.com, which is launching tomorrow in New York. It was in fact a world scoop........by about 40 minutes (WWD had a page one story in yesterday’s edition). Today we can add some more info. The site, we understand, is moving very rapidly towards the unveil and its offer now embraces boutiques curated either by - or around - 76 celebrities, 27 retailers, 55 designers and 12 bloggers. But the list of designers simply reflects those names who have thus far, apparently, agreed to participate in the venture. A designer directory lists over 200 designer names (including Australians Bassike, Willow, Thurley, sass & bide, Lover and Ksubi). But even that doesn’t embrace the full scope of the Boutiques.com offer, because products from a raft other brands and outlets that are not, it seems, officially involved, are also featured. They include US-based fast fashion chain Forever 21, the bête noir of the US fashion industry, which has been the target of numerous trademark/copyright infringement lawsuits initiated by US designers - including participating Boutiques.com designers Diane von Furstenberg and Anna Sui. 

Boutiques.com: Now you can shop their look............. on Google

On Friday, an anonymous New York fashion PR who calls him/herself No bullshit (actual Twitter handle @NoBtotheS) Tweeted “Breaking news: google is launching an ecommerce site with shop in shops by major designers #google #theyrgonnabepissed #geturshopon”. The Tweet prompted a flurry of coverage, with the penny apparently then dropping on all those who had received invites to Google’s “High Tech Fuses with High Fashion” party this coming Wednesday in SoHo, that the launch revolved around fashion e-tail. In fact, it had already been reported that Google planned to upgrade its shopping services to better compete in the US$140billion e-commerce market by deploying the image-recognition technology of recent acquisition Like.com to enable consumers to do comparison shopping. “We are hosting an exclusive fashion party to celebrate our partners” is all Google would tell WWD on Friday re the launch (see invitation below). Well frockwriter can fill in a few blanks. Our sources say that the new Google fashion initiative is called Boutiques.com and boasts not only online boutiques selling merchandise offered by various designers and retailers, but a large number of curated "boutiques" selling the looks worn by celebrities and other influencers.