It's always a great feeling when a client contacts you saying that you have been recommended for the job. Meili recently has put together a team of people who are performing top level work. Finding a stylist in Beijing is a challenge with an international eye so it was a great pleasure to work with Meili (http://www.meilistyle.com) and see her bring up the brand to a new level. It was also great to finally work with Chique. It's also great when a client tells you that they will be happy to use you again. All in all a perfect day!
Beijing, China - TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Event - Women in Tech Coverage I recently had the pleasure of being invited to the TechCrunch Beijing event on October 31-November 1st. It was quite epic as the French decided to participate in their favorite pastime and strike at the airport. I waited a lovely 8 hours until my flight, having woken up at 5am with no alert that there was a strike. I arrived half way through with a big luggage to the event. Trying to hide it behind the reception, I quickly made my way into the hall to listen to the presentations half asleep.
I quickly woke up as I saw a stunningly beautiful woman on the stage interviewing one of the speakers named Sarah Lacy. Confident, savvy, and with a dark red lipstick with long hair, she announced that she had just had a baby and had none the less left her family to attend to the TechCrunch Disrupt event.
During the break, I went to say "Hi" to some of the speakers and as I was over in the press section I started to see other beautiful, savvy, women walking around with clipboards and official TechCrunch badges. I approached one of them only to find she was not at all fierce and intimidating but rather lovely, kind, and helpful. As I thanked her for their invitation, I also mentioned how excited I was to have so many fashion focused topics to write about for 360Fashion Network's tech section. It was a surprize as 360Fashion Network has been so long the lone duck in that sector. She smiled at me and said that I should talk to another beautiful, sexy, woman typing furriously at her laptop who manned the fashion news on TechCrunch.
My head started spinning, asking what was going on here--there seemed to be no men heading up the TechCrunch Beijing event--I was finally surrounded by beautiful, smart, techy women! So hats off to Mr. Arrington, who as baggy-eyed as he is from lack of sleep, bad diet, and surely the attacks he's gotten recently from the industry, for hiring such accomplished, successful, beautiful, smart, women to man up his portal and work within his organization. For this, he's done an great job--I can even find it in my heart to forgive him for calling me a clown on TechCrunch reviewing my Anina Dress Up Game and insulting my CMO for wearing an above the knee skirt (Go Arrington for painting a positive image for women and supporting them in such a crude way--sarcasm). So how does it come that he has had such a change of perspective, a revelation to hire so many wiked girls?
I'm really happy not to be alone and wish those beautiful women to come again soon to Beijing and meet the fantastic techy Chinese CEO's and entrepreneurs over here. I hope they will also be at Le Web this year to meet again. Thank you also for having so much great food for our tech portal with all the fashion focused start-ups! Bravo! Keep going!
Many times in my career when I started, I worked for free for this exhibition of that upcoming designer, or this editorial for that big photographer. As I progressed in my career I had less time due to bookings, and passed through a period where I was no longer doing free things for anything, that's called the money making period: when you are hot, you have to grab it all. Then you come to the top of the piramid and you are financially stable, with your clients, and booking less but for more money. This is the stage where it's time to start your next life projects and thinking, and to give back. Never forget the exposure that xyz designer/event/magazine/photographer gave to you when you started, and now it's time to lend your name to support with attention, contacts, and notoriety the next generation.
I know some models just want to go to they gym or laze around in the sunshine (never!) all day dreaming lazy dreams of beauty, but it is in these moment that I promise you we are actually thinking, planning, diving deep into the soul to know what we are to be doing.
So it is with great pleasure and honor that I participated in the ESMOD Beijing graduate class of 2011 fashion show. Let me tell you! The quality of the designs were stunning. I have a few pieces that I would love to buy and I like all my outfits (of course since I"m the princiapal model I got my pick). The whole fitting was so super professional and many of my model friends from the New Silk Road Modelling School greeted me with "Anina!!!" and we instantly hugged (even though we cant really talk to eachother there's that model-bond). Sitting on my friend's lap I show her my photos I'd been snapping during the fitting of her and the other models. We laugh and she QQ Weibo's me and another girl Sina Weibo's me (there are so many social networks in China). I still cant write in Chinese....at least they can read my English.
It's fun the imagination of the graduating class's imagination. Some highlights to entice you to stay tuned. You can see the article written, but it's in Chinese. The fashion show was covered by the whole Chinese media as ESMOD is a very prestegious school from France. 360Fashion are the proud sponsor, with the ESMOD EVENT GUIDE MobileMags fashion app you can download from the gallery and check out all the designers directly in your mobile phone!
"In 2005, when I introduced mobile blogging to the fashion industry, no one knew what I was talking about," says Beijing-based catwalk model, tech entrepreneur and founder of 360Fashion Network, Anina, who is known professionally only by her first name.
"I was lucky to find people like [photographer] Sonny Vandevelde, [blogger] Diane Pernet and [designer company] Eley Kishimoto to agree to let me build them a blog and then convince them to blog from their mobile phones. Today, 13-year-old bloggers sit in the front rows and are the most influential people in fashion."
I was so thrilled when I finally got to shoot with my blogger and model soulsister, Zanita. After following her for many months she finally had a moment to shoot with me and the photos turned out so magical. Here is my backstage story with videos where I share with you the full scenario, and here is the post about the shooting on Zanita's blog.
You maybe wondering what it has done for him, all these new technologies?
First, none of these innovations were promoted by his PR agency. No press release, no traditional support from SpicePR at all. Actually, they were really quite in the dark about mobile, social, and skeptical about it--even going so far as to advise against it to him saying that he had to be careful about his branding. For an advanced PR company, they didn't really see the value in social media, mobile, or why Bas would want to be part of a network. Traditional company. So the numbers and figures that I will quote to you are really on their own merit.
The 360Fashion MobileMag was used by Bas Kosters Studio during his Bijenkorf popup store, where he printed on his hang-tags the QR code. The mag consisted of the PAR TEA collection overview with photos from the collection, his bio, and an overview, along with links to his website and a map where the Bijenkorf was located. They posted a notice on facebook and on their blog too. On the day of the opening of the pop up store, Bas Kosters Studio got 500 downloads. During the fashion week, when his show was broadcasting, Bas Kosters' 360Fashion MobileMag was listed on the LIVE!Streaming page and I also tweeted it. His total downloads are 1228 from 4 tweets #baskosters and linked on the LIVE!Streaming page.
About the LIVE!Streaming, 360Fashion created a branded page on our Facebook LIVE!Streaming application, where Bas Kosters could tag people, send out invitations, link to his twitter, sell items directly under the stream, and also people watching the stream could chat in real time. His facebook page Bas Kosters Studio, had only 72 people Liking it before the streaming started. The day before the show Bas Kosters guest were sent a notification that there would be the LIVE!Streaming. Again, with no communication other than his blog, twitter, a newsletter, and posting on his facebook page, 30 people watched the stream live, with a total of 405 people joining the page in less than 24 hours.
Facebook E-commerce is next so we are excited to launch that soon for him in the next days! All in all, for a medium small end brand to gain such traction in less than at 24 hour period shows potential in using these new interactive ways to engage customers in their handsets and online. It would be interesting to see what the numbers would be if his PR agency had been able to communicate to a larger audience and also international press. We will have to wait and see!
Meili Autumn has an air of ease about her, but when she puts that pencil to your eye, you are thinking it's a razor for the sharpness of her lines. She's also psychic, as for my Fashionista shooting I wanted to have a makeup that was black and sculptural--she said it first what was my hearts desire.
She's one of China's top makeup artists, born in America, but living in Beijing with her heritage. She's the editor of the China Weekly Fashionista section, a full 2 page centerfold spread featuring someone from the fashion and lifestyle industry in big and bold! Joanna Weidenmiller was in the spread with her Phoenix rising kimono that people still ask me about today (How to top that?! Only with http://Lu1228.360fashion.net ).
Meili has a way with her brush that is more like an eraser on a pencil that takes away all your little fine lines--physical retouching I'd call it. No wonder she's a 360Fashion Member, she's top in one of the biggest markets in the world!
Super pro, she didnt mind me blogging at all, cuz she's a blogger herself!
So what I tried to do was show BOTH perspectives LIVE!Streming on our facebook application and it turned out pretty well I have to say, Thank you to Yun Chen who is long time 360FAshion members and helped out the cause.
Hempworks Fashion shows are always crazy and for a good cause. Makes sense because they are an eco fashion company producing eco clothing--and their hemp farm is in rural China where they farm the hemp, process it, and manufacture the clothing on an organic farm. Amazing isn't it?
Sea Shepherd is a group of x-Greenpeace activists who became too extreme for the organization and were kicked out because they took a more "active" approach to stopping the destruction of the planet. Now they have their own television show on a Animal Planet TV Channel called, "Whale Wars". What they do is go to the Arctic circuit with huge ships and try to stop the Japanese whale harpooning that is going on illegally. The Japanese kill about 10-30 whales per year by harpooning them to death, and then they put them on a processing ship and take the whale oil and toss the rest in the ocean--such a waste and as you know, whales are endangered species.
Little did I know when I said "Yes, count me in!" to the Hempworks team as they are 360Fashion members since a long time, how famous this organization was and how well known. Before I left for China, my new roomate happens to mention that his favorite show is Sea Shepherd, and then proceeded to show me how they use naval tactics to disturb the Japanese harpooner. their idea is to run them out of business and bankrupt them by keeping them from doing the farming of the whales.
I certainly didn't mind hanging out with the Sea Shepherd Captain, Paul Watson, and the rest of the crew for a good cause. Not to mention the Sea Shepherd / Hempworks clothing is really top quality and so hot!
What I love about working with Hempworks is that they totally GET my Anina.net story. They specifically REQUEST me to walk down the runway with my phone and film and live stream. It means a lot to me, and no wonder they are members of 360Fashion since a long time. Check out the HoodlambMobile Catalog here and the rest of the footage of the show on their blog.
There is a final story to this whole post, which is that 2 Sea Shepherd jackets would not arrive in time, so as they are made in China from their organic farm, they had them sent to my office. The jackets were so heavy that I would have had to pay insane amount in overweight! So I had to take them out of my luggage, put one inside the other and wear them sweltering to death the whole Beijing, Moscow, Amsterdam flight. Only on the Moscow to Amsterdam was I glad I had them cuz the heating didn't work so I was all snuggly warm for some hours. But MAN to 2 jackets weigh a TON!
Many thanks to my friend Alec who got me to the venue on time cuz boy was I tired!
ps he's a world renowned photographer in the "hemp" world.
Starting Monday, May 3rd, Rosemount Australian Fashion Week is being streamed 360Fashion LIVE! Streaming on the Fashion News Tab, please join us starting at 9am Sydney time. Please watch online, comment, and ask us questions LIVE! Click here to watch the footage spread and share the news: http://apps.facebook.com/fashionnews/home/live/
The movie TIGER was shot by Beaufort films on location in Tokyo. Its a love story set in the Tokyo modelling scene and addresses the issues that we models face of falling in love while on a contract and having to deal with long distance relationships. The director, James, a model who not only directed the film, but acted in it, and who has a great band, had the DVD launch in the King's Cross, Sydney, Australia. I'm very grateful for the the shout out he gave to me at the event for the help I've been giving him in promoting the film. The film is excellent, and I was very happy to attend. The evening was an awesome event with live bands, DVD sales, inter-spliced with a special clip from the film.
The event kicked off with a live band performance by James's band (does one get any more creative?) with the room packed and everyone dancing.
His band was totally excellent electro 80's made modern by James's band.
Lots of fashion models showed up, including the lovely Bec who played in the movie, and several of Sydney's "it" girls took time out from fittings to support the DVD Launch.
Bec
It was great to see such a turnout and support from the industry for this great film. Check out the trailer and be sure to buy a DVD while supplies last and sales are online.
