Blogmodel: From Catwalks into the Web

Her name is Amina. She is a 'topmodel'. With her body... and her brain. How to make new business in fashion system

“Fashion is at a critical point. There are less means, less jobs, many brands and too many young designers with no money. Technology can create new possibilities, new collaborations and, why not, even rejuvenate the “uniform” of the high-tech industry filled with people in flip flops and shorts”. These words spoken as from a new economy guru come from Anina, the first blog-model of the third millennium, first guest cover girl for NerdTv and creator of a bridge called 360fashion.anina.net that joins fashion systems and technology: a blog-type virtual meeting point in which models, photographers, journalists and agents can exchange files, do shootings and videos and scout via wap. Everyone is assigned a weblog and a mobile phone with Lifeblog applications in order to connect to the micro.anima.net browser. This way an agent can interact in real time with the models, and photographers can send screen tests even if they’re on the other side of the world and without Internet. “I’ve tried to introduce the ‘mobile’ concept to fashion – says Anina, born in Colorado from German parents, and who is today on the New York and Paris catwalks – Us models are ‘mobile’, always travelling around the world and often alone with the only company offered to us by our phones”. The step from the palmtop to the blog, “with the aid of a friend who is an informatics teacher”, was a quick one for a top model who will not be contempt with front covers: “I love my job, but I’d rather be a role model than a top model, I’d prefer if girls were to copy me for my awareness as a young woman of the potential offered by technology rather than for my hairdo. On the Internet in fact, how you look is not important; it’s what you have to share with the rest of the world that is”. ‘360 Fashion’ was introduced in the last edition of the Paris Fashion Week and is sponsored by Nokia, which produces the Six Apart technology and involves designers (Erin Fetherstone), photographers (Sonny Eandervelde), operators (Anthony O’Dwyer) and the agency PS Model. “Fashion is reluctant to giving into technology – says Lionel Dejean of WS2M Scouting – But ever since it’s been fashionable to take pictures with a mobile phone, blogs can become a new resource for recruiting aspiring models”. As long as the blood pumping through the veins of an 86-61-89 body (like Anina’s) is ‘geek’.