BRAND NEW IDEAS FOR ONLINE FASHION SHOPPING
Be honest with me, despite having pretty much the entire retail world at your fingertips via your smart phone or computer (apart from some luxury brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton who don’t sell online), do you defer to the same handful of brands when shopping for clothes?
I can understand if you are physically going shopping. You can only visit the shops within your reach and city centres are now pretty much identical. Department stores are limited to the likes of John Lewis, Selfridges, and Harvey Nichols for a premium offering, but most towns and cities are bereft of independents selling contemporary brands.
Online you have the opportunity to discover all the brands you could possibly imagine. The issue is finding them.
Because the search engines are controlled by a paid system, whereby brands can “sponsor” fashion related words, it’s survival of the richest. Smaller brands can’t compete, so inevitably you see the same brands pop up over and over, this makes it harder to broaden your fashion horizons and make interesting or more sustainable choices.
The internet is a big place and unfortunately there isn’t an online directory where you can see them all in one place, so I try and make it my business to put some of these smaller brands in front of you, because even I, someone who spends a large portion of their working week browsing the internet, discover brands I’ve never heard of before on an almost daily basis.
I’m kicking off with the footwear trend that’s everywhere right now: ballet pumps. Every time I follow a link to a pair I like, I am flabbergasted at the price. So when I spotted a pair of patent leather ice-blue ballet flats, I assumed they too would be super expensive. But no. The Maya design from Scandinavian brand Shoe the Bear retail at £119.95, and you’ll be pleased to know they come in less seasonal colours such as black, too.
Next up isn’t a very small or a very new brand, in fact it’s stocked in some of the most prestigious retailers in Paris and Milan but it’s new to me so I’m sharing it. Undress Code, from Warsaw in Poland, designs, among other things, the most beautiful body suits. They are a need to know because I believe body suits are the perfect piece for under a trouser suit, sexy but super elegant. At around the £100 mark they aren’t cheap but they are something you can wear again and again.
You can call this your Fashion Yellow Pages. And I am JR Hartley...