Gant by Michael Bastian display at Project.

Digital Showroom
The future of fashion is immersed in new technologies and we’re not just talking about a brand hosting a Tumblr account. In this story, we take a look at three important new waves that are changing the way fashion is doing business, all of which are especially attractive to youth culture early adopters.

First, at the Project Fashion Trade Show at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas last February, among many interesting new features was Project’s partnership with the tech company Visuality and the debut of Gant by Michael Bastian’s web-based showroom on-site. The Gant display itself was very leading-edge featuring a cross between Scandinavian winters and American heritage for men’s and women’s collections for Fall 2011. Items featured included a mix of retro/heritage wool sweaters and plaids, with splashes of bright color and more modern silhouettes such as a red corduroy mini skirt or cargo pants and a denim jacket, and retro but modern classic alpine ski sweaters.

This was a showstopper, which got many people to enter their booth area which actually featured a display on a flat screen of their collection. Buyers could go through the collection digitally, place orders, but also view the full story of how the collections came to be, the thought-processes, design, and construction. While some more traditional buyers and brands may prefer a more traditional version of racks of clothing, this concept is the future. Many other brands at the trade shows also carried along their iPads and computers to show buyers more details of their collections than what was actually onsite, mixing up the tactile version of the show with digital.

We can probably expect more from Project along the digital showroom lines for their July 17-19 show in NYC and Vegas show August 22-24, 2011.

Shopping Advice App
Fashism has updated their app to a 2.0 version which will now allow even more crowdsourced shopping advice. The app, which you can get from the site Fashism.com, works as a quick, virtual way to figure out if a look is right for you or not. Launched in August, 2010, is has 80,000 downloads, which isn’t a lot, but its gaining momentum. The way it works is you upload a pic of your outfit or an outfit you like and gather advice. With the 2.0 version, you can get more targeted advice from selecting who you want to get the advice from.

It will also feature geo-location capabilities (via Foursquare) so users can tag where they’re at as they try on clothing at stores. The app also uploads to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Finally, it can also locate stores in the nearby area that others who have the app have been in and tried on clothing, ranking which stores got the highest ranking with the highest rated outfits.

Social Retail
Wheretoget.it is gaining ground fast since its debut in February, 2011, by performing the task of finding out where to get a popular dress, denim, jackets, shirt, or accessories. Some are hyping it as the Quora for shoppers.

Basically, subscribers can upload an image of an item they really like and let the rest of the users help them figure out where it’s actually located -either a brick-n-mortar store or an online site. The site is broken down into sections of apparel, accessories, footwear, etc. with links such as Popular Quest and New Quest, so the crowd can see what’s actually being quested the most.

The way they get users to post information about a product is through a point system, whereby a person gets 10 points for every link they post (to an ecommerce site). There are profiles for the users, so not only can you find things you like, but find people who are finding similar things as well. This all of course integrates into Facebook and Twitter.

Geo-localization is coming soon, so shoppers will be able to try things on in stores if they prefer that to online.

According to TechCrunch, Wheretogetit.it is part of a new wave of social shopping networks coming out of France, including others like social_mirror, LooknBe, Dress-Me, and video-based social network Ykone.