Karl Lagerfeld, Fashion Designer, Photographer, Publisher, Designer and Film Director & Loic Le Meur, Founder, LeWeb
During the dicussion, Karl & Loic will be joined by Natalie Massenet, Founder & Executive Chairman, THE NET-A-PORTER Group Limited
The show started off with some live breakdancing, then the first person interviewed was Karl Lagerfeld, the fashion designer. It’s not immediately obvious why he is up on stage, althoguh he’s funny and droll. He has a special bag containing 4 iPhones (each one for different sets of people), an iPad, a few iPods (he loads them up, has different music sets on different ones out of the 100s that he has). He uses these tools to help design, to sketch ideas.
He has over 300k books, a self-declared paper freak, but also uses a Kindle and the iPad for other content consumption. HE doesn’t see paper going away, but sees like TV and theatre. They will still be there.
He does 3 different collections for Lagerfeld (plus Chanel)…does not spend a lot of time on web as having to do collections.
Ahh, now we get to the reason, Why we have a designer on here.. Karl Lagerfeld is going to be online, ‘Karl’ a fashion brand entirely online for the first time. A new line from him. It’s going to be a ‘truly online launch’, from AR, mobile etc. It will be on Karl.com from 25 Jan (plus netaporter). Apparently it’s all about accessibility, online with ‘accessible prices’, with women all over the world having access to Karl (yes, Natalie is quoting the marketing message) It’s ‘modern’ that is going directly to the consumer, not to the fashion press first. Shipping all over the world.
With Renault last night and this launch, LeWeb is being seen as one of the the places to launch anything…even if the tech collection is actaulyl small. For me, just because it is on the web, does not mean it is tech. The web is ubiquitous, it’s not longer cutting edge. They’re celebrating that they are on all the social networks, etc etc, that they’re being innovative. They’re not the first, they’re just one of the first with a huge name!
Yes, I’m being a little cycnical; for the people launching this, it is seen as the next big frontier, really innovative. But it’s not really. It’s all about where they are on the journey.
