We made it! Hope everybody enjoyed fashion month, the live streams, and CatwalkLive's coverage. This season more shows live streamed than ever before.
This season was excellent in terms of sheer numbers with 196 shows live streaming, compared to 176 in Spring/Summer 2014.
My season started off with a rather blunt email from Milk Studios informing me that no shows would be live streaming this season. With several designers fleeing the tents at the Lincoln Center, the thought crossed my mind that live streaming may well have peaked. As New York closed, we had already lost six live streams compared to the same time last season, but frankly it could have been worse.
London Fashion Week's offering last season was embarrassing and followed season-after-season of decline. I told them this - a lot - by every method I had available; by Twitter, by phone and by email. I would have faxed them, too, had it been the 1990s. Fortunately, London added several new venues and shows to their offering meaning they live streamed more shows than ever. They still have work to do, though, as apart from Burberry, their offering is pretty basic technologically-speaking, but they've at least made progress.
Milan was Milan. There's not really much to say other than the fact they're extremely reliable with an almost unchanged number of live streams since I started doing the site. They also have the most impressive live streams in general, along with New York.
Meanwhile, in Paris, it was an interesting season. More shows than ever live streamed, but the offering was erratic. MyBeautifulDressing live streamed their fare share, but caused confusion due to a mix of technical problems and miscommunication. To be fair to them, they're new to live streaming, and I know full well how critical users can be.
New this season
There were plenty of new live streams this season including Hunter Original, Douglas Hannant, Balmain, and Hugo Boss. Temperley, Mary Katrantzou, Peter Pilotto and Vivienne Westwood Red Label all returned after a few seasons off, so these more than made up for Milk Studios' deficit.
Absentees this season
Donna Karan missed the opportunity to celebrate her 25th Anniversary by live streaming, Mulberry only had a low-key presentation and therefore didn't stream, while Kenzo have always had an on/off relationship with live streams with FW14 very much being an 'off' season. Givenchy also chose not to live stream despite showing last season.
Summary
It was a good year in terms of numbers, but most of the new live streams were pretty disappointing, what with the unreliability of Paris, and the low-fi offering from London. It is at least progress, though, and does illustrate that there's still demand for live streams.
No comments:
Post a Comment