Gadgetopia

Digital eye at center of a fashion hurricane: This is an interesting article about the influence technology has had on fashion. Apparently, fashion runway shows used to be only the province of the rich who could attend. They would see styles, wear them, and those styles would enter the public conciousness as the clothes of the wealthy — and that’s how it worked, up until cable.

The democratization of fashion started with cable television in the early 1990s, as the start-up channels realized that show footage made for easy viewing, presented no language barrier and was cheap. Turn on the television today, from Hong Kong to Prague, and you are likely to see a fashion show.

Then, the digital camera hit.

On Oct. 31, 1995, I wrote in the International Herald Tribune about a new initiative at New York Fashion Week: “The day of instant fashion flashed round the world in nano-seconds has arrived — without any fanfare, nor any discussion of its dramatic and awesome implications for the industry.”

The following season, in March 1996, I used photographer Christopher Moore to demonstrate to readers how images on the “no-film digital camera” had been transmitted by a public telephone line.

And thus, fashion was democratized.