Review of Spring/Summer 2014's live streams

Life returns to normality after the whirlwind of Spring/Summer 2014. As it does, CatwalkLive.TV reflects on the live streaming offering this season from New York, London, Milan and Paris Fashion Week.

This season was a largely disappointing one. 176 shows live streamed compared to 180 last season. 

At a cursory look, a drop of four isn't too concerning, but it comes after increases every single season for the last three years - I'm hoping last season wasn't the peak and designers are losing enthusiasm for broadcasting their collections.

New this season

A few designers live streamed for the first time this season, including Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti, Kenzo, Antonio Marras, Veronique Leroy, Amaya Arzuga, and Anne Valerie Hash. A few designers took the initiative themselves, but big credit has to go to trunk show website My Beautiful Dressing who live streamed three shows from Paris which definitely helped save a lacklustre season.

Kenzo have live streamed twice before, but haven't for several seasons now, so it was nice to see them back on the schedules. Balenciaga also live streamed after taking a season off in Fall/Winter 2013.

Absentees this season

The number of designers who chose not to live stream this season is both ominous and bizarre in equal measure. Ominous because it seems those designers don't see any benefit to broadcasting their shows, and bizarre because settling for blurry Instagram pictures and tweets is no substitute for seeing the collection in motion.

Just some of the designers who didn't live stream this season included Derek Lam, Jen Kao, John Galliano, Paul & Joe, Shiatzy Chen, and Paola Frani. Less importantly, but still making a dent in the total number of live streams were Diesel Black & Gold, Adidas Y3, Etam and H&M.

Technical problems

There were a few technical problems this season. Both Carolina Herrera and Diane Von Furstenberg's live streams failed to show on the official Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week homepage, and also websites like CatwalkLive.TV. I suspect this is due to contractual/rights-related issues rather than technical, as they both showed without trouble on the designers' websites.

Miu Miu's show seemed to work only on Chrome with theFashionSpot members complaining of compatibility problems using other browsers.

Jil Sander's live stream completely died for the majority, however, and didn't show at all.

In summary...

New York continues to lead the way with live streams. Every show from the Lincoln Centre and Milk Studios is live streamed, and many off-site designers such as Marc Jacobs, Alexander Wang and Donna Karan embrace live streaming.

London used to lead the way but has taken its foot off the gas and live streamed far fewer shows this season than last. Expect another article on this soon. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. 

With the exception of Paola Frani, it was very much the status quo in Milan. A decent offering, both from Milan's fashion council, Camera Moda, and also the larger heavyweight designers there.

Paris was Paris. But it's promising to see live streams from My Beautiful Dressing. Hopefully this will set the momentum for future seasons. Read more here.

Thanks everyone for your support this season.

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