It used to be that making it in the fashion world entailed actual sewing, meeting a few well-placed people face-to-face, selling them on well-designed clothes and then setting up a tiny boutique shop preferably in a hip neighborhood of New York. But that’s all so passé now. Forget the clothes; what’s important is the Myspace, the Twitter and the website! This is exactly why every important fashionista has to have a cleverly design internet presence.

What, though, is actually the purpose of all these sites?

Websites are meant to serve a number of functions – often forgotten. They are supposed to provide information, buzz, or revenue. But so many designers use their website not for functionality, but as another creative venue. Creativity is all fine and good, but if you can’t figure out where to buy that creativity, then what’s the point?

Too often these sites are simply an extension of that designer’s creativity, without any nod to the non-creative aspects of fashion. So many “artists” are more than a little passionate about their “vision,” which they extend into every aspect of their business. Free People’s website feels free, or at least a little bohemian, with hand-drawings and muted colors. Ralph Lauren’s is full of bright colors and a clean background, because what is Ralph Lauren other than bright and clean.

But, if so many designers incorporate parts of their image and vision into their sites, how come so many of the sites look the same?

In order to be an official fashion website, it’s practically a requirement to have big (no, bigger than that) pictures; absolutely no information about what or who those picture are of; and fancy Flash players that don’t always work on my computer. A homepage with no noticeable information bar or navigation is preferable, though not required. It is also best if the menu options only pop up when you scroll over oddly places pictures. Under no circumstances, are you allowed to have an online store – that’s just so bourgeois.

For obvious reasons, most fashion websites include large pictures. But too many of the designers sites include little else. It seems the standard mode of operation is a Flash animation with a large picture (hopefully of the designer’s clothes) and a small navigation menu. Rarely, is that menu easy to follow. Where are the clothes sold and for how much? Maybe if you need to ask, you shouldn’t.

Why would they do this to us? It’s almost like the designers don’t want us to know anything about them or their clothes. It’s almost like they choose form over function in their websites, as well as their clothes. Oh, right, that’s what fashion designers do – they’re all about form and never about function.

Runways and seasons showcase clothes that will probably never fit anyone you know. Dressy showpieces tend to be held together on the runway by a combination of wind machines, duct tape and pure luck. Maybe it’s not that designers are trying to make websites (or clothes) that don’t work, maybe they just don’t know how to make things that do, work.

Part of the artistic temperament is the need to always be pushing the envelope of what exactly passes as art. If you aren’t constantly more cutting edge, more innovative, more hip, then you’re already old news. Obviously, the trend towards obscurity isn’t exactly new. Super trendy bars behind blank doors, impossible to find, were probably invented around the same time as alcohol.

The problem is that this is becoming and increasingly vicious cycle. If the hip always gets hipper, then what’s next? Victoria Beckham in a Marc Jacob’s shopping bag, that’s what.

And fashion websites are only the latest victims.

Fashion news sites, on the other hand, sometimes resemble actual news site that just happen to report on fashion. Daily Candy, Style.com and The Cut incorporate (some) information along with all the flashy design and big pictures. They have to rely much more heavily on a standard blog/news format, both (a little bit) for us but also for them. Not only would readers not visit a site where they couldn’t find information, but in order to update the information regularly they can’t make anything too complicated.

The only nod to being more creatively-conscious is often the use of photos (it’s best if you can tilt the photos at a 45 degree angle), bright colors or, alternatively, all black and white, mixed in with hand-drawn elements.

So called “street-style” blogs most accurately and oftenly mix form and function. They look like what they are: photos of well-dressed individuals (typically wearing “vintage) and descriptions of what they’re wearing. Whether it’s the ever-popular Sartorialist or the most grassroots HEL LOOKS, the idea is the essentially same: pictures and information.

And maybe that’s all we can really expect of our fashion sites. To expect that an avant-garde designer delivers a website that tells us where to buy their clothes and how much those clothes cost would be besides the point, and not very avant-garde either. Demanding that designers become something they’ll never be –– accessible –– is as unrealistic as demanding that they create sample sizes that actually fit models. Oh, wait, I think magazine editors are starting to do that…

>Written by d/visible contributor Kelly Dunleavy.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am and is filed under Fashion, Culture, Art & Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.