Want behind-the-scenes access to the Paris couture shows this week? Just check your live Snapchat feed.
The social media, specializing in disappearing photography, is hitting fashion’s most elite couture shows. Today, the popular real-time media app will provide user- and brand-generated content to its viewers live feeds. Through the use of geotagging, the Snapchat content will range from front row footage to behind-the-runway exclusives at each brand’s productions.
This feature comes as a refreshing change to the couture world, who high-end garments and lavish runway shows aren’t typically connoted with the casualty of Snapchat. The media platform will offer an ‘authentic’ look at couture’s finest, thus shifting from the stylized images of the brands’ Instagrams, oftentimes used to market their latest ad campaign.
“Instagram is still the fashion platform, but what Snapchat is doing is giving a new conversation. Instagram is more curated and you can get a whole feel for a brand. Snapchat is more behind-the-scenes,” senior manager of digital communications at the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s, Emilie Fife, tells WWD.
Fife continues that Snapchat’s popularity among designers is fast growing as the brands try to relate to their clientele. After serving as a liaison between Snapchat’s Live Story and the CFDA’s fashion events, Fife comments that the designers think it hugely successful to have their brand’s name and designs featured in the social media’s live feeds.
This latest marriage of couture fashion and social media followers marks yet another stepping stone for Snapchat, who has welcomed the fashion world into its relatable feeds with open cameras. Just last year, Lilly Pulitzer customized its shopping experience by featuring a geofilter in its stores nationwide. A spokeswoman for the designer tells WWD that Snapchat has culminated in the brand’s highest level of social media engagement, surpassing the media moguls of Instagram and Facebook.
This April, Burberry became the first luxury brand to acquire its very own Discover Channel on Snapchat. And during its men’s spring 2017 show, Coach handed its Snapchat reigns over to BBC host, Nick Grimshaw.
Andre Cohen, Coach’s president of North America and global marketing, tells WWD, “[Snapchat] keeps us on our toes and allows for original thinking, and we pride ourselves on being active consistent community participants on the platform — not in and out sporadically.”
Snapchat is offering a unique experience for fashion lovers worldwide. The social media platform allows a new, perhaps younger generation the opportunity to experience high-end fashion first hand. It gives multiple perspectives to brands that we normally see on the pages of glossy magazine covers.
Couture coming to your Snapchat feeds marks the crumbling of walls that once blocked the public’s access to high fashion. All taking place, one selfie at a time.
