Show and sell

A NEW business model will turn heads at Melbourne Fashion Week next month.

WHEN it comes to tapping into the Zeitgeist and hitting on a winning pop-culture formula, British media mogul Simon Fuller seems to have the golden touch.

He has managed the careers of the Spice Girls, Annie Lennox and Amy Winehouse and is the creator of the Idol franchise and co-creator of So You Think You Can Dance. And now he wants to revolutionise fashion on the internet.

Fuller’s company 19 Entertainment has partnered with fashion entrepreneur Sojin Lee to launch the Fashionair website. Lee, who has worked for Chanel, Bottega Veneta and Net-a-porter, says the idea behind the site is to blend fashion and entertainment. The site is heavy on original video, with most of it produced in a dedicated television studio in London, and the content is refreshed daily.

So how does that differ from Fashion TV?  “In terms of the video content, I would say that Fashion TV is very much about the glamour of fashion whereas Fashionair seeks to show the emotion that everyone who experiences fashion shares,” Lee says.

“For example, we pick users of the site and showcase their own sense of style. We also differ by utilising shopping with video technology that allows the user to shop for the items they are watching.”

Fuller told Vanity Fair last year that it was his belief in democratisation and in breaking down barriers that had attracted him to Lee’s concept. “It can be very intimidating for some people to walk in the front door of an exclusive, high-end store,” Fuller said. “The idea of Fashionair is to bring the pleasure of shopping and browsing into your home.”

While one of the biggest differences between Fashionair and other fashion websites is the fact that users are able to purchase items featured on the site, Fashionair itself is not in the business of selling merchandise. Instead, it drives users to affiliated e-commerce websites where they can make the purchase. Lee says the target audience is women aged between 18 and 40 and while she won’t divulge audience numbers yet, Lee told Women’s Wear Daily last year that the potential audience could be as high as 22 million. Sounds like another hit for Fuller.

Sojin Lee will be a presenter at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival Business Seminar on March 19.