Recently, Burberry re-opened their flagship store in London’s Regent Street, but this time with a digital approach. Interestingly enough, the physical store will resemble Burberry World Live, their digital retail space (rather than vice versa).
According to an article in Financial Review, Christopher Bailey, the firm’s chief creative officer, said: “We designed it like that because when you’re shopping at home online, you are on the sofa with your credit card. You don’t stand up and queue.” He continued, “Most of us are very digital in our daily lives now. Burberry is a young team and this is instinctive to us. To the younger generation who are coming into adulthood now, this is all they know.”
Then today, the brand only furthered their ambitious digital initiative, offering a live stream of their London Fashion Week runway show for their spring/summer 2013 collection. The show was previewed by 1,500 guests at the brand’s custom-built venue in London’s Hyde Park, but if you weren’t invited to have a seat, you could view the experience via the Burberry website in real time, as well as exclusive content through updates on Burberry’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
While other brands have offered live streams and live updates during both New York and London Fashion Weeks this year so far (such as Marc Jacobs and Oscar de la Renta, to name a few), Burberry took theirs to the next level with three simultaneous live shows in an attempt to blur the physical and digital, in their words, bringing a personalized experience from the runway to the world.
And how did they do this, you ask? With a whole lot of technology.
The pre-show offered video shots of fashion industry favorites and celebrities exiting their cars, greeting each other, and working their way to their seats. Shots cut from close ups of Anna Wintour walking outside the show, to boy band One Direction’s Henry Styles posing for photographers, to scenic overhead clips, layered with dreamy music.
Once the show began on the live stream, the left side bar offered options to shop the runway look exclusively from now until September 23rd, and the right bar streamed Instagram photos, along with updates containing information the songs playing. Shots of the actual runway were both cinematic and likened to a watching sports on television — sweeping cameras swung above capturing a closer look at the models, along with frontal, side, and far away shots intercut… all live, a feat in itself.
See the runway show segment here:
What do you think about Burberry’s huge push towards digital?
[Photo credit: AFP]
Fantastic livestream that offered a complete experience that rivaled actually being there. And the music was superb…