Today marks the long-awaited launch of Fashionair, an online destination that seeks to bring everything fashion-related that could be done on the internet into one place. When we first logged on, we were completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content available, but we have attempted to break it down, report card style, below. But just a word of warning—we advise you not to log on during a busy day at work, as it's all too easy to get sucked into one video after another of glamorous girls giving tours of their closets and before you know it, it's two hours later and you still haven't started AM Clickage that expense report you were supposed to be working on...
TEAMWORK: A- The site was developed by American Idol creator Simon Fuller and former Net-a-Porter buyer Sojin Lee—so, as you can imagine, it's full of video content (presented as "shows") revolving around all aspects of fashion (mainly styling, trends, news, and interviews). A long contributors list of editors and bloggers are mostly British, with LA's own Tracey Ross (owner of the now-defunct boutique as the same name) providing the obligitory American perspective for styling features and the like.
USES TIME WISELY: A It's always fun to watch fashion personalities ham it up for the camera, so we have a feeling we'll be taking a lot of workday breaks to watch the digestible, under-five-minute video interview segments (e.g. one of the first featured designer Thakoon showing off his favorite throw pillows and ceramic animals). In fact, there's very little text on the site at all, which is refreshing after staring after a full RSS feed all day.
CREATIVITY: B+ We had high hopes for the shopping section, which is broken down by body type, personal style archetype (e.g. "classic", "bohemian"), trend, and type of garment (e.g. "clothing", "bags"). However, the selection seemed a little arbitrary and uninspiring, and it didn't include anything you couldn't find by browsing the Saks or Barneys websites.
ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS: C- With such a huge amount of content on the site, we felt like it should have been organized in a more clear, concise way. We had to dig quite a bit to find out what we were looking for—like why would an interview with Julia Restoin Roitfeld be under the "People" heading, but a similar one with Anna Sui be under "Personal Style"? And why would some shopping pages be categorized as "Personal Style" while the rest would be found under "Shopping? The cryptic feature titles don't help, either, too many of which annoyingly include the word "chic" (e.g. "7 Days of Chic"," The Chic Fix")
COMPLETES ASSIGNMENTS: B+ A (slightly hidden) city guide section could potentially be really useful once it's built up a little more.
FINAL GRADE: B+ For the most part, the content is polished, comprehensive and insider-y, and we're looking forward to exploring it in more detail as it evolves. Even so, we hope that the site becomes more streamlined going forward—after all, we don't want to have to dig through five pages before we find the one new interview that's gone up that day.
