Expressing Your Style Online

Today I was reading an article at Mashable.com about the "5 Ways Social Media Changed Fashion in 2009". This article was written by Macala Wright Lee the CEO of FashionablyMarketing.Me. Lee explained how social media is becoming a huge outlet for fashion designers and brands. The fashion industry as adopted social media as a way to connect fans and create brand loyalty. She went on to discuss the different changes to the industry including communities, embracing the mobile apps, the rise of bloggers, the impact of user-generated content, and creating niche communities. Within the section on niche communities, I found a website to explore, Polyvore.com. This website is a place for the public to express their personal style. This website has a section where you can interactively create a look by picking different pieces of clothing. I found this to be fun and a really good marketing tool. After I made my "look" I felt stylish and accomplished in my task. This is a great idea because it gets the users familiar with the brands and incorporates individual style. There is a style advice section along with brand information section. The advice section is very smart and user friendly. They also added a celebrity style bar and a section of hot trends. I enjoyed all of these factors of the site and felt they were very organized and interesting to use. I checked out the Polyvore blog to get inspired and gain new information for my new Chiq blog post this week. I loved the style of the blog and the individual fashion sets that were posted.
My first poster:

 

When constructing this fashion poster I felt like I was using a program in Photoshop. It has hundreds of choices for the backgrounds, pieces of clothing and accessories. You can design the poster anyway you want and place items where you please. When you are finished, the site asks for you to publish your work on Twitter or Facebook. This aspect shows how social media is incorporated within another social media site. I find this to be interesting how we communicate through these outlets. What will they think of next?!