Fashion
1st edition — by Patrick McNeil — Nov. 21, 2007
The Site Type
The fashion industry brings a very unique set of talents to the world of web design. For many of these companies the inevitable desire to use their fashion skills in this alternate medium is a logical path. As a result their sites are a direct reflection of their skills in the visual arts. It is no surprise that this industry puts so much energy into the web. After all it is a representation of them and they wouldn’t dare be caught out of style.
As a whole, these sites have a rather distinct style to them. Almost every one of them has a slightly atypical layout and navigation. They have by no means followed the heard and simply replicated the standard formats. And of course this is a direct reflection of the way the fashion industry works. Fashion design is all about forward thinking and figuring out the next style, and even creating the next style. So it is no surprise to find these sites as unique as they are. Take the Alba Rosasite for example. While the interface is not completely over the top, it is a clearly not the standard tabbed layout. The design is slick and simple and extraordinarily easy to navigate.
Another common thread among these sites is the strong use of photography. Which should come as no surprise of course. What’s interesting is that many of them use it as background elements. This works really well as it allows the images to be nice and large. Besides, they must have thousands of spectacular photos to pick from, why not use them heavily. After all photos more then anything will communicate the styles and designs of these artists. No need to point out a specific example for this one, pretty much all of them do this.
The overall sense of style in these sites is really amazing. This is most definitely an industry web designers can learn from. It’s really exciting to see how their extreme knowledge of fashion design can be translated in this digital medium. This is certainly a skill other types of artist struggle with.
Sample Usage
