Blog Entry #9: New Fashion Show Formats

Where's your phone right now? I bet you could tell me in an instant because let's face it, folks, we're addicted to technology. Our generation started out not being able to go to bed without our stuffed animals and blankets, to now not being able to go to bed without our phones. We use them for the usual phone calls and texts, as well as ignoring annoying people trying to hand us fliers on the street and homeless people shaking their tin cans at us (Oh get off your high-horse, you do it too)--my point being: they come in handy. But I digress.

With the rate at which technology is becoming a constant part of our generation's lives, it's no surprise that retailers and designers are trying to get our attention through more innovative and technologically-enhanced ways. That means changing the traditional format to something we haven't seen before.

Burberry has recently gone on a technological tirade, launching its 2010-11 Prorsum Fall collection in live 3-D and launching new stores equipped with huge LED screens.However, they took it took a whole other level. To celebrate the opening of a flagship store in China’s capital, Burberry’s show featured holograms walking through eachother, multiplying along the catwalk and exploding into snowflakes. This definitely wasn't your typical catwalk. Before the show officially began, images were projected onto huge screens all over the room, including ones of the iconic, signature plaid in bag form rippling across the ceiling. For the actual show, instead of the usual angry-looking models strutting down the runway, there were only 6 angry-looking models walking down the runway and the rest were angry-looking model-like holograms! Of course we know that Alexander McQueen got the ball rollin' in 2006 when he featured an unbelievably chilling and beautiful holographic Kate Moss on his runway.Take a gander at the video below and some of the stills I posted just below it:

Spontaneous Combustion on the Runway?

I spy Abbey Lee in the finale

Five years later after the iconic Moss moment, and this is definitely a bit more updated than Mr. McQueen's hologram for sure. Despite that, I think it was a very neat progression of the hologram runway. Burberry's chief creative director, Christopher Bailey, is young and has been bringing Burberry back into the current age of fashion and technology--and it seems to be working for them. In an interview with Vogue, Bailey said he will try to continue being technologically innovative with the brand. It's all cool, but hopefully the prices on the signature trench won't be holographically or literally doubling anytime soon.