I’m not going to write about online or any other campaigns. Campaigns come and go. Some of them are remembered, most of them are not. In my blog, I will concentrate on the everyday presence of the brand, what’s available 24/7/365. That is, ladies and gentlemen, online. Some fancy-ass fashion brands launch gorgeous high quality print campaigns to start a season (don’t get me wrong, I adore those), and at the same time their online presence sucks big time. There’s a good article about the subject in NY Times, Fashion and style. I will get back to this later.

I went through a website from a designer called Chris Benz. The site has all the obligatory basic content (Home-Story-Collections-Press-Stockists-Contact) that all the designer & fashion sites are offering. But with Chris Benz, the form and the experience is built with enough twist to keep that particular Chris Benz in mind. Not to mention the beautiful clothing.

The user interface design is surprising. You move downwards when you click, with basic navigation on the lower right. The effect is so well made and smooth, that I found myself spending some time playing with it. Checking out the Spring/Summer 2010 collection (and the previous collections, too) is really easy and fast. Nice indeed.

The design of the first two sections (home and story) is quite traditional with collages of accessories, photos, sketches, articles, notes etc. In my opinion the graphic, more abstract, simplified style used in the other sections of the site is a lot more unique and interesting.

A detail that makes me happy, is that also online stores are mentioned in the stockists list. Also known as good customer service.

From Net-A-Porter: “Rising fashion star Chris Benz first caught the attention of the fashion world when he won the CFDA’s Emerging Talent Award in 2004. The Parsons Graduate interned with Marc Jacobs and worked at J Crew before officially launching his own line at New York Fashion Week in 2007.”

I was browsing Uppercasegallery.ca and ended up reading about Iris Apfel. To be honest, I ended up spending some hours finding out more about her. Man, she’s got style. I would wear everything she, in the bold age of 88, is wearing. The unquestionable crescendo is what she states in the video: ”Once I started to wear glasses, I thought, if I have to wear glasses, I might as well wear glasses“. Sounds like an attitude to me.

Apfel and her husband Carl were the founders and owners of the international textile company Old World Weavers. Their clients included for example the White House: during Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Reagan and Clinton. Not to mention style icons of their time such as Greta Garbo, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Estee Lauder – just to mention a few. I red somewhere that Lindsay Lohan had asked Apfel for a style consultancy but got politely ignored. The Apfels retired in 1992 and sold the company to Stark Carpet.

Despite Iris Apfel’s stunning outfits, she’s not a designer, but a world-class shopper. Her idea of shopping is not the spending, but the adventure and excitement of finding and digging up surprising combinations. I know exactly what she means – most women do. She also claims she never paid more than $15 for a pair of jeans. Today, she has a fashion collection that covers 50 years. Her collection, “Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel”, was a premiere success in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (09/2005-01/2006).

Check out a great article about Iris Apfel and her fashion collection in Boston.com. There’s also a book about her, of course.

Isn’t it the most frustrating situation when you would really like to like something, and they just won’t let you? I have visited the Muji store in the US, know something about their product range and philosophy. The unique thing about the brand is that Muji products are never visibly branded. As they say: “The value of the Muji product is in what it is, not in who it is designed by”. “Mujirushi Ryohin”, as Muji was originally known, means “no brand quality goods”.

Since all those nice, affordable every-day-things aren’t available in Finland where I live, I was happy to check out their webstore.

I went directly to muji.com assuming that it would lead to an online store. Nothing happened: all I got was a blank page. Then through Google I found muji.us, but that site of course serves only the US and Canada. Finally I found my way to muji.eu,  which turned out to be the right destination.

Muji.com

I found out that muji.com actually has content – the site just loads really slowly (from Japan, I guess?). Using a progress bar would be recommended. I’m willing to wait, if it’s somehow communicated, if it’s worth waiting and if there’s something interesting to see.

With or without the progress bar, it still takes awfully long to see the main page. Muji.com is a Flash site with two main “functionalities”: a Play Muji blog widget and Muji Rhythm. I still don’t know what the blog widget is, since I didn’t have the time to just sit and wait (it takes more than one hour to download). If someone manages to check out the widget, please let me know.

Muji Rhythm was a lot faster (but still, slow). I think this one looks like how I would imagine the brand look and feel online. It also reminded me of the successful online campaigns from another cool Japanese brand, Uniqlo.

Local Muji Sites

A significant contributing factor to total messyness is having several websites (muji.eu, muji.com, muji.us, muji.net, muji.es… ) Please use one address that just leads to the right place. I want to go to muji.com, and believe me, most of your other clients want to do that also. Of course a company in global business has country- or continent-specific organizations, logistics, personnel, product range, banking, CRM databases and all that. I just don’t want to know anything about it, I really couldn’t care any less.

Muji Online Stores

The Muji product range, brick-and-mortar stores and physical catalog are all very plain and stylish, as well as the packaging and the overall design concept. What happened when building the online store? The online stores are country/continent–specific and all of them are different. The similarity they have is that they’re plain ugly and illogical. It’s very non-intuitive, forcing you to try out many different things before finding what you’re looking for. The design and the overall look is basically from the 90’s, and did I say it’s ugly?

The anti-climax of the online experience was when I ordered their newsletter. I got a confirmation email (plain text) saying: “Newsletter subscription success” – and nothing else.

Conclusion

I think the worst thing with Muji’s online presence is that the execution of the online store(s) is so bad, it’s diametrically opposite to their stated brand philosophy. From Muji’s 2009-2010 catalog:

“Muji products came into being in the early 1980’s as a result of a new mood, calling for a return to simplicity in daily life. As life gets more complex, the need for simple lifestyle solutions becomes all the more necessary. To find these, look no further than Muji.”

Scott Schuman aka the Sartorialist is an icon when talking about fashion and style blogs. Time Style and Design has named him one of the 100 most influental people in the design scene.

Schuman “left” his career (he worked as a curator for a showroom and executive for Bloomingdale’s) in the fashion world to spend more time with his daughter. As a photographer he is self-taught – and the rest is history. He works for Conde Nast’s Style.com, Wallpaper, GQ and Vogue.

In my opinion, his comment below crystallizes the success: he has a very clear point of view.

Schuman says: “When I worked in the fashion industry (15 years), I always felt that there was a disconnect between what I was selling in the showroom and what I was seeing real people (really cool people) wearing in real life.”

Emmas designblog is the leading design blog in Sweden. I recommend you follow up what she’s into. She’s gone through God knows how much all kind of (stylish Swedish) magazines and websites, stores and services, events, blogs and movies, I would reckon even advertising and tv shows. And she keeps on choosing the nicest stuff into one single place. Thanks, Emma.

Emma claims “My style is Scandinavian, but I show design from all over the world. I try to focus more on styling and photography than shopping and products, because I believe that is the way to go to encourage a more sustainable lifestyle.”

One of my favorite portfolios is Paranaiv by Arne Sundnes. He says he loves fashion photography, design and good concepts. What more can you ask for?

The site is his portfolio. My favorite section is Inspiration. It’s an endless collection of amazing photography – you can also search for example by photographer, model or magazine. What makes it so enjoyable are the images, of course. The bonus is that through the whole site, the images are really huge and top quality. It just looks so good and works well. Again, what more would you ask for.

The main reasons for my blog being so much into fashion and design are:

1) I’m a big fan of fashion, and 2) I’m a big fan of aesthetics.

It seems to me that the fashion industry is the forerunner as it comes to designing beautiful sites and services.

A good example of this is NET-A-PORTER.COM, a fashion webstore that offers all the latest high-end brands. It’s good entertainment and a perfect place for daydreaming – if you’re into fashion, that is. It is a simple site with very simple features, but it has a very clear concept. You’re able to start browsing/shopping by “What’s new” or “By Designer” or “By Boutique” (consisting of themes such as loungewear, essentials, wedding, work wear or vacation) or just choosing the product categories (clothing, lingerie, bags, shoes or accessories).

One of the nicest new features is the “My Account” section where you can create your own wishlist – it’s simple but works well, and creates something concrete out of the daydreaming… It also includes a “My Closet” section, where all the products you have ever shopped from NET-A-PORTER.COM can be seen. You are also able to personalize your newsletters by selecting your favorite designers. It’s a very much appreciated feature, but still surprisingly rare.

The magazine section is one huge style book with an “Outlook Reminder” feature, which allows you to pick a certain style or outfit and automatically add it as a reminder to your calendar. The video section is basically about designer runway clips and interviews.

Last but not least, they do have Sales also – highly recommended.

There’s always the official face of the company. Built based on brand guidelines, checked and commented by god knows how many people. I think the most interesting part of the Chanel brand is Fashion news and trends by Chanel. It gives you the idea what they really do in real life. Fashion news and trends seems spontaneous and not too official – never mind the truth. Not too many brands communicate like this – or even consider it marketing or advertising… I really enjoy the way they open up different aspects of the brand.

I found out that Karl Lagerfeld has dressed and photographed Barbie and Ken. I found out that Chanel has just provided gorgeous décor out of plain white paper for Cambon-Capucines pavilion: 7000 handmade paper flowers. I got to know Lily Allen performed in their Spring/Summer 2010 show (there’s a video in the blog). And they provide an Iphone application. Nice.

Too bad that such a basic thing as browsing this simple blog is really tricky. The content just “slips” from your fingers way too fast or way too slow. Another issue is that the page takes ages to load. Please fix these, merci beaucoup.

Sanna Annukka probably is one of the shiniest stars of Finnish design at the moment. This despite the fact that she’s living in the UK and is “only” half a Finn. Her somehow familiar but still modern style has raised quite a lot of attention.

Her website www.sanna-annukka.com gives a good, compact idea of what she’s all about. My favorites of her work are the designs for Zune Originals and the Soulbirds. Check out this one, recommended.

Anthropologie’s website not only looks pretty, it works like you would wish every webstore to work. After visiting their stores in NYC several times, I know they’ve managed to present the spirit of the brand really well online.

Anthropologie has been expanding it’s operations: they have over hundred stores in ca. 30 states in the US and presence in Canada also. The online store has been available for Europeans couple of years. The first European Anthropologie store opened in UK London in October 2009.

They provide a comprehensive catalog for inspiration at the physical stores on monthly basis, a catalog so nice that I would call it a coffee table book. It’s not something you throw away, as it’s way too well made. First of all, it doesn’t feel like a product catalog: printed on a quality paper, high quality images, beautifully designed, every detail in place. Simply speaking, it’s not catalog-ish. From the online version of the catalog, you can directly select items and add them to your shopping bag, and you can directly post every item to Facebook or Twitter. Nice and easy. And this is just a bonus.

The actual webstore is divided into four sections: clothes, shoes & bags, jewelry & accessories and at home.

For example, when choosing “clothes”, “50′s inspired dresses”, “circle” and “Around The World Dress”; you end up into a view with impressive selection of functionalities to choose from. First of all; you’re able to zoom the dress right away when mouseovering. Nice, easy and fast. Of course basic stuff like “open larger image” appears also, but you’re also offered to be able to download the dress image.

After checking out the basic info on the “Details” layer (material, size, availability, colour, prize, add to shopping bag, send to friend, share at Facebook/Twitter), you can move on to “Reviews” page. On that particular page, you’re able to read reviews and check out ratings for the dress. Cool! And this info is also made easy to share on Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us and MySpace.

To make sure to be totally up-to-date all the time, order the newsletter and download the Anthropologie widget (available also directly from the product page). What more can you ask for? Thicker wallet probably.