Resumen del capítulo

The dissemination of fashion show content, in particular live streaming, is billed as a tool to promote an increased level of consumer access to and productive interaction with fashion houses, brands and commodities. Since the introduction of live stream fashion shows at the end of the 2000s, numerous fashion companies have conducted fashion show-related campaigns, in conjunction with live streams, across social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Google+, YouTube, Snapchat, Line (a Japanese social media platform) and WeChat (a Chinese social media platform) (see Mortimer, 2015). These campaigns can also take the form of cross-promotions with these same platforms, or with media devices: Twitter often operates as a default,

‘host’ content platform for photographs, videos and even the streams themselves. This chapter interrogates the practice of transmitting fashion show streams and related content concurrent with brand inducements to consumer interaction via social media. I continue to define the audience-performer, or spectator-presentation, relationships that I have delineated thus far, but seek to incorporate here a reflection on the aims and purported consumer-driven ethos of fashion show live streams and social media campaigns, and, more crucially, the precise nature of the consumer-brand interactions involved. Based on content analysis of tweets and photographs, I locate specific moments in which live streams and related social media content re-assert the fashion show’s exclusivity, or fail, due to technical limitations, or temporal incongruities, to make the event as immediate or interactive as brands and the press might claim. These initiatives also focus attention on front row attendees to create for the online spectator (or user) a sense of spatial proximity, but such attention enhances attendees’ cultural capital and consumers’ desire for presence. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate, fashion show-concurrent social media

companies, producing media impressions and creative content, and generating consumer data, which the companies can then use to their retail advantage. Indeed, spectators’ virtual access to the live performance is contingent on our active social media use and textual and visual

contributions, as opposed to a comparatively (assumed) passive viewing of the live stream.

Fashion show-related social media initiatives make apparent that, within the condition of

communicative capitalism, as Jodi Dean (2010a, 2010b) describes, our social media interactions take on a pleasurable dimension, akin to, and in the promotion of, consumption.

I first offer a brief theoretical overview to contextualize the manner in which fashion companies construct and market live stream-concurrent social media initiatives. I then trace the practice of these initiatives, since the first live stream experiments at the turn of this decade, and describe some well-documented examples. For the remainder of the chapter, I conduct a

comparison of two prominent British fashion companies as case studies: luxury retailer Burberry (and its ready-to-wear line Burberry Prorsum) and high street (mass market) phenomenon Topshop (and its premium line Topshop Unique). Both of these companies are considered pioneers of digital and social media use in fashion communication and have undertaken

innovative campaigns concurrent with their fashion shows, in addition to separate campaigns in between Fashion Month seasons.^cxvii While I document the companies’ earliest and most

innovative live stream-related campaigns, I focus the analysis on their Autumn/Winter 2015 fashion shows, held one day apart and covered in the fashion and social media press as a retail competition.^cxviii The associate that I interviewed was involved in and on-site during the Burberry Autumn/Winter 2015 fashion show.^cxix

Fashion Shows as Pleasurable Interaction and Experience

Since live streaming offers consumers an unprecedented measure of temporal or ‘real time’

access to fashion shows, fashion companies promote the interactive social media components built into/onto them as further offers of direct content, access and inclusion. Online spectators can comment on the show and/or the collection, make trend forecasts, retweet or respond to photographs of collection pieces, purchase select items online (ahead of other consumers), and even, in certain cases, customize and reshare screen shots of collection pieces. This interactive component positions the live stream within Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) experience economy, in which companies sell interesting experiences, including immersive retail environments and diverse brand-related interactive opportunities, in addition to material commodities, in order to permeate all facets of consumer life. Marketing scholars Glyn Atwal and Alistair Williams (2009) argue that Pine and Gilmore’s tactic of experiential marketing, which includes the creation of immersive retail environments and diverse interactive (and virtual) opportunities, is essential to luxury brand positioning in a postmodern, networked social climate. The

effectiveness of such experiences is predicated on a co-production of meaning and value between brands and consumers (Atwal & Williams, 2009, pp. 341-342).^cxx ‘Live’ access and ‘real time’

interaction is a supposed free offer from the brand to focus consumers’ attention onto the fashion show and build desire for the clothes. Auslander (2008) comments that, “To the extent that websites and other virtual entities respond to us in real time, they feel live to us, and this may be the kind of liveness we now value” (p. 112). It is this precise experience of liveness that fashion companies want or instruct consumers to value: the live stream does not just offer consumers a

‘real time’ virtual feed, but the concurrent social media interaction elicits instant, immediate

consumer or fan interaction locate these initiatives within Couldry’s model of the media ritual:

collective participation concentrated on a mediated event that upholds media institutions’ claims to social and corporate prominence (2012, pp. 67-68). Fashion show live streams cannot claim the scale and viewership of media rituals such as political events, athletic competitions and

award ceremonies, even as the fashion press has called fashion show initiatives a “spectator sport”

in the Internet era (Kansara, 2013, para. 1). Still, these initiatives prompt consumers to use media, not just to watch live streams but also to participate in social media conversations and purchase commodities via e-commerce sites. Fashion shows, as a live performance ritual, operate here as focal events that build and strengthen media-based consumer affiliations. While it is possible for consumers simply to watch live streams or access video archives, it is notable that certain companies make such concerted efforts to augment these viewing experiences as such through the implementation of technological gimmicks and/or prompts to social media participation.

Interaction with fashion companies via live streams is intended as an uncritical celebration of consumerism: campaigns function to enhance fashion companies’ media and corporate profiles, to draw press and consumer attention to presentations amidst the crowded Fashion Week calendar, and to promote the use of the associated platforms.^cxxi Nonetheless, these companies’ claims that digital and social media democratize fashion and facilitate a direct-to-consumer model recall Dean’s observation that “enthusiasm over new gadgets and apps, communicative sites and practices – like Twitter, Facebook, and blogging – displaces critical attention from their setting in communicative capitalism” (2010b, p. 28). Still, companies’ actual capacities to make consumers feel included in the event are often tenuous, while, in certain moments, such inclusion, or too much inclusion, runs counter to their commercial interests.

Furthermore, live stream interactions assume a level of what Jan van Dijk terms material access

to a computer or handheld device (2011, p. 180), in addition to a decent Internet connection to watch the live stream and to switch between applications. To participate in the social media components, consumers also need a profile on the social media platform(s) utilized, as well as usage access: familiarity with the platform and its user processes and mechanisms (van Dijk, 2011, p. 182). Companies also hope that consumers possess a credit card account (and enough economic capital or credit) with which to make online purchases.

Immaterial Labour for Brands

The immaterial labour that consumers perform in order to participate aids fashion companies in the circulation of mentions, the maintenance of brand communities and the collection of

information that can be accessed for future retail initiatives. Fashion-show related social media campaigns call forth and utilize both of the forms of labour that Lazzarato identifies: that of computational processes and that of the formation and maintenance of cultural influence (1996, p.

133). First, consumers are instructed to perform various computational actions, such as

connection to the live streams (accounting for time zone differences and accessing the websites), responsive tweets, photograph circulation, clicks, likes, code scans and purchases via

e-commerce platforms (though in-store purchases also produce consumer data). Second, as the Topshop case will illustrate, companies rely on cultural intermediaries already ensconced within the field of fashion to comment on collections and to forecast trends. Consumers’ own efforts in the form of tweets and responses also builds cultural influence (aspiring fashion bloggers might tweet from their computers) but does so on behalf of the brands rather than the consumers per se.

This labour thus adheres to Tiziana Terranova’s concept of free labour, insofar as brands

capitalize on consumers’ engagement with their presentations and commodities (2000, p. 37).^cxxii

or social media’s capabilities to build conversations around collections and trends, companies’

return on investment measures account for hits and for retail sales, rather than the social or qualitative aspects of the provocation, form or content of consumers’ interaction. The cases that I examine demonstrate that companies have elected to assert a greater degree of control over the parameters of users’ interactions and content, so as to curate positive mentions and to avoid criticism or other forms of embarrassment.

Live Stream-Related Social Media Use

Since the end of the 2000s, social media initiatives, connected to and built around fashion show live streams, have become a routine part of the Fashion Week calendar – and the overall fashion system – conceived by brands’ media and public relations teams, commented on in the press and anticipated by consumers. While not all fashion companies undertake these initiatives (though fashion shows are still live streamed), those companies that do have embarked on too many individual projects to account for in one chapter. I offer here a list of pioneering and/or well-documented examples.^cxxiii Initiatives of the scale that I document require elaborate calculation and infrastructure, often in collaboration with external social media strategists and digital technicians. Therefore, it is no surprise that the brands best known for coordinating them are multi-billion-dollar earners that can afford the overhead. The fashion press and social media observers laud these companies – Burberry first and foremost – for implementing digital innovations, with brands that do not seen as antiquated outliers, and their comparative lack of financial success attributed to their self-exile from the infinite revenue possibilities of online media (Sedghi, 2013; Kansara, 2014).^cxxiv While one cannot ascertain whether McQueen’s representatives asked Lady Gaga to tweet that she was performing at his Spring/Summer 2010 presentation (in the example that opened this dissertation), the fan response that her tweet

elicited can be viewed as one of the first convergences between a fashion show live stream and Twitter. In Autumn/Winter 2010, Burberry, under creative director Christopher Bailey (who has since earned the dual title of CEO) became the first brand to live stream its fashion show via its website, and to let consumers purchase collection pieces from its e-commerce site immediately after the presentation for a limited time (Uhlirova, 2013, p. 152). Consumers could tweet their reactions to the stream, and these ‘real time’ tweets were inserted below the feed (Amed, 2010).^cxxv In addition to Burberry and later Topshop, brands that have demonstrated calculated use of Twitter in conjunction with their fashion shows include River Island, H&M, Matthew Williamson, Hunter Boots and Tommy Hilfiger. In Autumn/Winter 2013, in one of the more notorious experiments, New York-based Rebecca Minkoff incorporated a Twitter feed into her live fashion show. Users were invited to tweet to #RMFall, and the feed was displayed on a screen as attendees took their seats, and left visible behind the models once the show started.

Minkoff’s team failed to account for a real-time Twitter feed’s unpredictable and “unfiltered”

nature (Notopoulos, 2013, para. 2). Internet prankster collective “Weird Twitter” trolled the feed with scatological humour, call-outs to models, satirical fashion- and politics-related comments, and alerts that attendees’ cars were to be towed, and, once the hashtag trended, the feed was spammed with pornographic images (Notopoulos, 2013, para. 8). This (comparatively low-budget) initiative demonstrated that it remains in brands’ interests to maintain some control over the content of media impressions. That same season, Diane von Furstenburg streamed her show on Google+ and outfitted her models with Google Glass headpieces to communicate the feel of walking the runway (rather than visuals of the clothes). Several companies have experimented with innovative uses of Instagram and Vine. Michael Kors is considered a pioneer in using Instagram to disseminate front row and backstage photographs. For Autumn/Winter 2014,

British designer Giles had model-of-the-moment and social media star Cara Delevingne film herself on a smartphone as she marched down his runway and post the videos to her personal Instagram account, reaching her millions of followers.^cxxvi More recently, Burberry, Rebecca Minkoff and others have posted fashion show photographs to Snapchat. The application deletes content after a preset time period, and thus renders it ‘exclusive’ insofar as it becomes more ephemeral than the show, which continues to circulate in digital forms after its finale.

BURBERRY AND TOPSHOP – DIGITAL COMPETITORS

Given the wealth of campaigns to draw from, this chapter focuses on two comparative case studies from Autumn/Winter 2015 London Fashion Week: Burberry Prorsum’s #TweetCam Twitter campaign, and Topshop Unique’s #livetrends Twitter campaign. Both companies are noted innovators in the use of digital and social media to create online experiences or content around their fashion shows, in order to garner consumer attention amidst the Fashion Week spectacle. I first compare the companies’ live streaming practices to assess whether these brands do foster social media access and conversation or merely facilitate the production of mentions and impressions. Examining two campaigns that occurred within the same season, and with the same media capabilities, permits me to compare better the purported intentions of interactive campaigns across different market positions, aside from the obvious goal of retail sales. In essence, I can outline what brands claim to do in offering these opportunities for consumer interaction, and assess the ultimate forms that such interaction takes. Press outlets and social media watchers have also compared these companies, in Autumn/Winter 2015 and in prior seasons, since both are British and both utilize social media as a central component of

communication and marketing, particularly during London Fashion Week (see Baldwin, 2015;

Hall, 2015; Macmillan, 2015; Moth, 2014; Quin, 2015). While the companies’ intentions behind

the use of social media differ, the outcomes of the Twitter campaigns, in terms of the measure of inclusion (or lack thereof) offered to customers, are similar.

Before commencing with discussion of the Autumn/Winter 2015 campaigns, I provide a brief overview of each brand’s history and market placement, and a chronicle of its notable fashion show-related social media initiatives to date. Despite their disparate market positions, both brands undertook strategic rebranding initiatives, at the turn of the millennium, in order to reestablish cultural and commercial relevance. Several of the brands’ digital and social media campaigns can be attributed to one source, marketing strategist Justin Cooke. Cooke worked at Burberry from 2006 to 2012, where he attained the position of worldwide VP-PR/VIP/events and was instrumental in that brand’s overhaul and implementation of digital communication (Diaz, 2013b, p. 18). Topshop headhunted Cooke as its Chief Marketing Officer in 2012 for the explicit purpose of rehashing its brand and augmenting its digital and social media presence via the same means (Diaz, 2013a, para. 1).^cxxvii Though Cooke oversaw Topshop’s first fashion show-related campaigns, he departed the company late in 2013 to launch a media startup; he has since founded the social media application Tunepic and is now CMO at the technology firm Kinetic. He was succeeded by Sheena Sauvaire, now titled Director of Global Marketing and Communications, who acted as overseer of and mouthpiece for the Autumn/Winter 2015 #livetrends social media campaign. Cooke also spearheaded, for both brands, the construction of virtual environments and interactive social media presentations for consumers watching the live streams at the brands’

flagship stores.^cxxviii While the in-store, live stream installations could be analyzed in the same detail, as a distinct set of constructed interfaces between consumers and the live performance, it is difficult to describe these installations without having witnessed or participated in them. Such installations privilege those consumers that live near or can travel to a flagship store, much as the

first public department store fashion shows were still the domain of consumers in cities. It is mind-boggling to consider the expense of these installations as opposed to the lesser cost of opening a fashion show to the public (albeit still in London). The creation of these installations indicates that the actual fashion shows’ exclusivity must not just be preserved but can be used as a marketing tactic. Furthermore, the installations do not simply illustrate that these fashion companies are digital innovators but promote the use of media for its own sake.

Burberry and Topshop – British Brands

Comparative brand histories reveal the extent to which both of these companies rely on a similar, constructed emphasis of Britishness, in their promotional materials and in their collections. As outlined below, Burberry earned its reputation as the maker of the special trench coat worn by British officers in World War I; the trenchcoat has since become an icon of British fashion. Even as Burberry updated its image in the late-1990s, it did so “while retaining distinctly British themes as the content of [its] advertisements” and featuring prominent British models such as Kate Moss in its campaigns (Moore & Birtwistle, 2004, p. 414). In interviews conducted for Topshop Unique’s Autumn/Winter 2015 preshow, which I describe in more detail in the next chapter, held at the Tate Britain art museum, brand personnel describe the collection’s aesthetic and cultural references in terms and tropes that recall a conservative British heritage, in a similar manner to Burberry’s nationalist invocations (Topshop, 2015c). Creative director Kate Phelan explains that the collection was based on “great British classics … Fashion has always embraced our style heritage, so we’ve focused on those real classics like tweeds and big chunky knits and lovely florals. … It all comes together to build on this ancestral … fashion idea.” Host Laura Jackson notes twice that the fashion show is happening in an “iconic” British historical location.

Phelan adds that the museum is a “landmark in London … [that] resonates with the idea of the

collection, and [bears a] slightly heritage feeling … that real establishment type of environment.”

Casting Director Rosie Vogel echoes this British-focused sentiment when informing us that model selection was based on the keywords “heritage,” “breeding” and “posh.” Her statement that the girls should look “expensive and well-bred … like they come out of expensive boarding schools” places the models within an aristocratic, imperialist ideal. Head make-up artist Hannah Murray refers to the models, with their “windswept” hair and skin, as “thoroughbreds” or “blue bloods.” Head hairstylist Anthony Turner elaborates, “The idea is that she started in the

highlands, but she’s gone to London, but she’s still got this kind of mad, windswept hair, but

highlands, but she’s gone to London, but she’s still got this kind of mad, windswept hair, but