Oh, Madonna, how we’ve needed you! Thanks to her halftime show performance, y’all probably can’t remember why last year’s  show was so disappointing. Your brain has probably erased the thoughts of the Black Eyed Peas being terrible with Madonna being amazing. Those twelve minutes were a wild ride of Confessions-era flashbacks, full-body chills, pom poms, melting ligaments, Vogue covers — and energy remained impossibly high, even though Madonna’s clothes weren’t all-over sparkly for the whole show. In the slideshow, enjoy the fashion highlights from this seminal event, and read Anna Wintour’s fabulous reaction to the performance.

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under:
madonna
,anna wintour
,vogue
,divas
,cee lo green
,nicki minaj
,m.i.a.

Last week Polyvore secured $14 million in funding, bringing its total venture capital to $22.4 million. The site claims 13 million unique users a month, or about double the audience it had two years ago. It’s an impressive number for what, at its heart, is a big network of people who love to make collages.

Of Polyvore’s 3.3 million registered users, just 27 percent are men. (They must make their collages, which Polyvore calls “sets,” with women’s clothing; though Polyvore plans to make men’s clothes available for set-making eventually, executives don’t know when yet.) If the site’s success illustrates anything beyond what Facebook and Twitter have already proved about our love of online networking and self-promotion, it’s that we also love to collage, and that women especially love to collage.

But at its heart, the appeal of Polyvore is not time-wasting, or bulking up a portfolio for art school (yes, people really use sets — collages of fashion items, photographs, and sometimes text — for that). It’s about competition. The true genius of the site is the ability to like sets and follow users. “When you express yourself, you do it for an audience,” Polyvore CTO Pasha Sadri tells me. “You care about how many people are going to read your article, for example.” (He’s right — I do.) The more “likes” and followers your sets accrue, the more the world appreciates your skills at collaging. Polyvore isn’t just about playing with the high fashion clothes one normally couldn’t afford, it’s about showing that, given that opportunity, you can do it better than everyone else. It’s not all that different from that other obsessive league of online hobbyist competitors: fantasy football players. Like a Fantasy Football team, a collage is only as good as the sum of its parts. The better users are at assembling winning combinations of fashion items and imagery, the more “likes” their sets will accrue from the Polyvore community, and the more contests they will win. Prizes range from the monetizable — trips to Fashion Week, shopping sprees — to the simple ego boost of winning. 

In Fantasy Football, fans can show off their sports knowledge by picking their own teams of favorite players, changing lineups every week, and making trades. And since gambling is frequently involved, fans not only get to show their friends how good they are at pretend-managing a team, they also get to win money.  Similarly, Polyvore is making gradual steps toward monetization by running an increasing number of contests that reward users for making the best sets across a range of themes — everything from shopping sprees to trips to Fashion Week. Of course, lots of women play Fantasy Football and do it well, but many others don’t, because they don’t care about sports. (I agree with Janice Min that following celebrities and what they wear is no less inane than following teams and athletes that have no affect on our lives.) Women who prefer to obsess over shoes and the celebrities who wear them can get the same addictive, master-of-the-universe thrill with Polyvore. It’s just that instead of trying to combine their favorite athletes in the most winning way, they’re using shoes, clothes, bags, and celebrity photos.

Before Polyvore, we collaged, and we collaged online, but we lacked a way to measure who the fiercest, most talented Internet collager was. Some of today’s most popular female fashion bloggers have been posting collages to their blogs for years. Susie Lau of Style Bubble occasionally presents images of fashion collections expertly in a collages format, like her recent post on the spring 2011 Proenza Schouler runway collection, and another of designer Tsumori Chisato’s runway work. (Lau’s own accessories shoots even look like collages.)  Tavi Gevinson also routinely makes collages as art for her blog posts, like her recent interview with Elle Fanning. The New Yorker profile of her even detailed how she keeps scraps of things around for when the urge to collage strikes — the floor of her room is “covered with fabric, Pez dispensers, and old issues of Spin—raw material for making things,” while Tavi keeps on hand a “plastic drawer filled with clippings from fashion magazines.” Plenty of other cool collage artists, like Susan Rivas — a personal favorite who is trying to get the word “collagistration” to take off —  are also out there, collaging away in relative obscurity. But without going to the trouble of comparing their traffic numbers, we wouldn’t know whose collages are “winning.”

Now that Polyvore has so smartly turned collaging into a competitive Internet sport, the future for collagers seems limitless. When Polyvore executives say they want to be thought of as “a media company, like Conde Nast,” what they mean is that they want to create a collage community powerful enough to equal editors at the top women’s magazines. “We definitely aspire to that level that publications like Vogue set in terms of quality and influence,” Sadri says. “We aspire to find the next generation of Anna Wintours,” CEO Jess Lee echoes. Anna Wintour is like fashion’s Tom Coughlin (Giants coach) or Bill Belichick (Patriots — no we won’t pick between the two!). It’s just that instead of the world’s best tackling, football-throwing men, she gets to play with — or coach — the world’s best clothes, celebrities, and mansions, and put them all together in the fashion bible known as Vogue. And really, what chick who enjoys clothes doesn’t fantasize about doing just that?

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Last week Polyvore secured $14 million in funding, bringing its total venture capital to $22.4 million. The site claims 13 million unique users a month, or about double the audience it had two years ago. It’s an impressive number for what, at its heart, is a big network of people who love to make collages.

Of Polyvore’s 3.3 million registered users, just 27 percent are men. (They must make their collages, which Polyvore calls “sets,” with women’s clothing; though Polyvore plans to make men’s clothes available for set-making eventually, executives don’t know when yet.) If the site’s success illustrates anything beyond what Facebook and Twitter have already proved about our love of online networking and self-promotion, it’s that we also love to collage, and that women especially love to collage.

But at its heart, the appeal of Polyvore is not time-wasting, or bulking up a portfolio for art school (yes, people really use sets — collages of fashion items, photographs, and sometimes text — for that). It’s about competition. The true genius of the site is the ability to like sets and follow users. “When you express yourself, you do it for an audience,” Polyvore CTO Pasha Sadri tells me. “You care about how many people are going to read your article, for example.” (He’s right — I do.) The more “likes” and followers your sets accrue, the more the world appreciates your skills at collaging. Polyvore isn’t just about playing with the high fashion clothes one normally couldn’t afford, it’s about showing that, given that opportunity, you can do it better than everyone else. It’s not all that different from that other obsessive league of online hobbyist competitors: fantasy football players. Like a Fantasy Football team, a collage is only as good as the sum of its parts. The better users are at assembling winning combinations of fashion items and imagery, the more “likes” their sets will accrue from the Polyvore community, and the more contests they will win. Prizes range from the monetizable — trips to Fashion Week, shopping sprees — to the simple ego boost of winning. 

In Fantasy Football, fans can show off their sports knowledge by picking their own teams of favorite players, changing lineups every week, and making trades. And since gambling is frequently involved, fans not only get to show their friends how good they are at pretend-managing a team, they also get to win money.  Similarly, Polyvore is making gradual steps toward monetization by running an increasing number of contests that reward users for making the best sets across a range of themes — everything from shopping sprees to trips to Fashion Week. Of course, lots of women play Fantasy Football and do it well, but many others don’t, because they don’t care about sports. (I agree with Janice Min that following celebrities and what they wear is no less inane than following teams and athletes that have no affect on our lives.) Women who prefer to obsess over shoes and the celebrities who wear them can get the same addictive, master-of-the-universe thrill with Polyvore. It’s just that instead of trying to combine their favorite athletes in the most winning way, they’re using shoes, clothes, bags, and celebrity photos.

Before Polyvore, we collaged, and we collaged online, but we lacked a way to measure who the fiercest, most talented Internet collager was. Some of today’s most popular female fashion bloggers have been posting collages to their blogs for years. Susie Lau of Style Bubble occasionally presents images of fashion collections expertly in a collages format, like her recent post on the spring 2011 Proenza Schouler runway collection, and another of designer Tsumori Chisato’s runway work. (Lau’s own accessories shoots even look like collages.)  Tavi Gevinson also routinely makes collages as art for her blog posts, like her recent interview with Elle Fanning. The New Yorker profile of her even detailed how she keeps scraps of things around for when the urge to collage strikes — the floor of her room is “covered with fabric, Pez dispensers, and old issues of Spin—raw material for making things,” while Tavi keeps on hand a “plastic drawer filled with clippings from fashion magazines.” Plenty of other cool collage artists, like Susan Rivas — a personal favorite who is trying to get the word “collagistration” to take off —  are also out there, collaging away in relative obscurity. But without going to the trouble of comparing their traffic numbers, we wouldn’t know whose collages are “winning.”

Now that Polyvore has so smartly turned collaging into a competitive Internet sport, the future for collagers seems limitless. When Polyvore executives say they want to be thought of as “a media company, like Conde Nast,” what they mean is that they want to create a collage community powerful enough to equal editors at the top women’s magazines. “We definitely aspire to that level that publications like Vogue set in terms of quality and influence,” Sadri says. “We aspire to find the next generation of Anna Wintours,” CEO Jess Lee echoes. Anna Wintour is like fashion’s Tom Coughlin (Giants coach) or Bill Belichick (Patriots — no we won’t pick between the two!). It’s just that instead of the world’s best tackling, football-throwing men, she gets to play with — or coach — the world’s best clothes, celebrities, and mansions, and put them all together in the fashion bible known as Vogue. And really, what chick who enjoys clothes doesn’t fantasize about doing just that?

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Get the gasping out of your system now, if you haven’t already: Star magazine is reporting that Snooki is pregnant with her boyfriend Jionni’s child. It’s a terrifying thought, since Jersey Shore makes it seem like booze is to Snooki what chlorophyll is to plants — life can’t go on without it. But despite playing a total mess on the show, Snooki can reign in her messiness when it comes time to brand herself. When we spoke to her at a press event for her new fragrance some months ago, she said all the right things, and was so media-trained and generally “with it” that the conversation was almost boring. (Nonetheless, I hear that when she doesn’t really have to try hard to promote herself or sell things, she can turn the training right back off and devolve into a scary, drunk mess who throws chicken wings from the catering table at people, instead of eating them — which is an actual story someone who had to spend time with Snooki told me about her.)

Snooki says that she’s focusing on building her brand. She’s already got a fragrance, slippers, and self-tanner, with clothing probably on the way. She’s “written books” that have sold well. She’s already a huge television star. Celebrities who are famous for nothing more than being famous have to find ways to evolve more than the average celebrity in order to keep us interested. Doing something like getting married for just 72 days or having a baby will help take their very public lives, as well as their brands, in new, and therefore valuable, directions.

This is not to suggest that Snooki got pregnant — if she is, in fact, pregnant — for the sole purpose of selling stuff. But imagine what she can do with her brand as a mom. Bethenny Frankel got her own TV show based on her marriage and pregnancy; her rapid slim-down following the birth can only have helped sell her line of cleansing supplements, workout DVDs, shapewear, and books about being thin and happy. Snooki, who, unlike Bethenny, had no brand pre-Jersey Shore, could do a line of kids’ clothes, more books about motherhood, or even diet products — not to mention the inevitable motherhood spinoff show (our suggested titles: Mommy 911, Toddlers and Pickles, The Original Dance Mom).

Even the press she’s getting on the rumors alone (Whoopi mentioned it on The View, apparently) is only going to enhance her celebrity.

Related: What Snooki, the Kardashians, and More Can Teach the World About Building Successful Fashion and Beauty Brands

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under:
snooki
,the bump pits
,tv

The recent Chanel couture show was exciting because it was on a "plane" situated in the Grand Palais. The obvious twist was that the plane was not the kind that flies around, even though that is so something Chanel would do with its money and comfort with spending it. Well, apparently, holding a fashion show in the air is so something someone else did 80 years ago. We dug up the image you see on the left of a fashion show that served as entertainment for passengers on a plane going from New York to Miami around the year 1930. And just think of what planes try to entertain you with now: endless re-runs of He’s Just Not That Into You. 

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under:
chanel
,couture
,airplane!
,fashion shows