Last week, the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit Conference took place in New York city. One of the speakers was Jack Nickell, the founder and chief strategy officer of ‘crowdsourced’ fashion brand Threadless. During the conference, he talked about the importance of the online community on their website.

Nickell talked about how Threadless is about celebrating their community’s work and that this should be reflected across the brand. According to PSFK, he said that “the reason they haven’t partnered with large retailers is that they can’t tell the story behind the tees in the same way they can on their own site”.

Nickell also stated that user voting was vital because of the impact it has on building the community. He said: “It is more valuable to have a user score a design than have them buy a tee.”

Read about it here!

Shoppers visiting Macy’s Herald Square store in New York through November of this year are in for a surprise! Macy’s and LBi have re-invented the dressing room experience by using augmented reality, app technology and social media.

The dressing booths are equipped with a 72-inch multi-touch mirror and an iPad. The customer selects clothing from the iPad application and transfers the items on their body’s image on the mirror. And there’s more! While shopping, customers can easily upload photos of themselves in their new outfits to social networking sites (using e-mails or SMS). This allows them to get live feedback from their friends with a flick of the wrist.

Want to know more? Read the full article at http://www.psfk.com/2010/10/macys-rethinks-the-fitting-room-experience.html

Looking for that particular shoe that exists in your mind but can’t be found in the stores! Look no further and just browse to Shoes of Prey. Shoes of Prey is an Australian website that lets you create custom  shoes online.

So how does it work? You start by choosing one of the six starting designs — ranging from gladiator heels to ballet flats. And afterwards … the fun starts by altering the whole form of the shoe by choosing the toe, back, heel, decorations and of course the leather or fabric.

So why keep on searching for that one shoe of you just can design it yourself!

Just want to share a video that tells you everything you need to know about the Open Garments research project, where we are working on.

The Ralph Lauren Rugby brand launched  a “Make Your Own” iPhone application , by which consumers can create their own Rugby shirt directly from their iPhone, which  can now also be done through interactive store windows in select stores..

By using the application and the shop window, customers can customize a Rugby shirt  with patches and lettering,  buy it, email it, post it to Facebook or save it. But if you might wonder how you would look with that particular shirt, you can upload a photo and actually see how it fits you. And by shaking the application, you can change your skin tone ore later your haircut. Afterwards you can share it with others in a public gallery and even rate the creations of others.

On the interactive store windows, all of this can be done by touching the glass with your hand. This means you can customize a shirt at the store anytime day or night, without even going inside.

Source: PSFK, Ralph Lauren Rugby

Just 49 days until my birthday!! So if anyone wants to buy me the perfect birthday gift, check out the customization programme of Leica! I just customized my personal Leica M in just 9 steps and it looks like this …. unfortunately the price is also very impressive (4770 euros).

But as we all know: one has to pay for quality!!