I’ve been thinking about how to write this post for quite some time but after reading today’s (Thursday) Wall Street Journal, I got all excited and decided today was the day I’m going to blog about this.

Ms. Teri Agins, the reporter who covered the article entitled The Future of Luxury: Custom Fashion, Cheap Chic talks with Tom Ford, arguably one of the most influential designers of today and former creative director of the Gucci Group. I agree completely with Ford as to his statements and analysis of the fashion marketplace:

1. In a shift from the era of mass luxury, consumers are demanding ever more uniqueness and customization in fashion.
2. As high fashion becomes more democratic, with designer clothes available at Target and Wal-Mart – everyone is capable of pulling off a stylish individual look.

Today, however, consumers no longer want to have the same thing at the same time. “Now everybody wants to have something different,� Mr. Ford says. “A woman doesn’t necessarily want the same bag her friend has. That is part of the appeal of vintage fashion- you don’t see yourself coming and going. It’s something that you found.�

Lets now pull back from this article and apply a little Darren Herman analysis.

Lets first approach this from the online media space perspective: consumer generated content and customization of the web. Sound familiar? Consumers now have the ability to customize their news (thru RSS feeds), create start-pages (yourminis.com), post videos (youtube.com), create avatars (oddcast.com), and tons of other opportunities to make the web their own. Isn’t web 2.0 all about making the web your own? In the advertising world, many brands are looking at ways in which consumers can interact and engage with the brand in new ways, not through traditional means.

Can’t we relate this to what Tom Ford is saying in the fashion world? Yes. We have finally reached a time in which the world is about “me.� Not just about Darren Herman, but lately, Time Inc. says, You. Last year, Reinier Evers talked about the term MEdia. The trend in media is to make it about me. We have now reached the time in fashion where we can go mainstream and allow shoppers to customize their clothing in ways never technically available [to the mainstream] before.

Customizing the color, amount of pockets, fabric, patterns, logo, on a per fashionista basis is now available. The only leverage a consumer had with a brand was size… now, if we want 3 pockets instead of 2, or green leather instead of brown, we can now get it… and this isn’t just for celebrities any longer. It may take a little longer to receive the actual item you are buying (may have to mail it to you or pick it up in the store), but you know that you’ll be getting a customized article of clothing for a realistic price.

In 1999, a company called CafePress.com came out of the wood-work and emerged as a leader in the online customized clothing space. CafePress allows anyone to be a fashion designer (most people create t-shirts) with a simple to use interface that creates a storefront for online purchasing. If you have an idea for a t-shirt or a drawing pre-made, you can upload it in minutes and people can be purchasing from your online store.

The best part of CafePress is that the designer does not have to hold inventory… it’s printed on a per order basis. No overhead. Genius. To give you an idea of what type of volume CafePress is doing, as of December 2005, they had over 22 million unique items for sale. It’s now over a year later…I think it’s safe to assume that there is demand for customized clothing.

I predict that you’re going to be able to order customized fashion (from Gucci to H&M) at any of the stores that you’d likely to purchase that specific item from. Department stores are going to become faux design laboratories – where you can go and customize any item of your choice. When I was walking around a department store in Zurich, Switzerland, in the Spring of 2005, they had a shoe display where you could customize your strap and cork bottom. It was genius! Within 5 minutes, you could pick out all the parts to your new shoe and have it assembled on the spot… imagine the mashup possibilities when Nike and Gucci start sharing parts. Come’on, a Nike sole and Gucci straps would be hot… ok, maybe not.

Nike is already in the game with Nike ID. Have you customized your sneakers yet? Lands End, one of America’s conservative brands is being proactive in the online world… custom clothing. Check it out. What about your brand?

What I’m trying to show in this post is that the fashion world is following the web. On the web, we want it our way – built for us. Every piece of consumer generated content defines who we are… from your Oddcast avatar to your MySpace profile page. In fashion, what we wear helps define who we are as well. Today, the trend in fashion is coming that we can customize anything we want for ourselves… and it’ll be readily available. Imagine the world reversed where we start with a white t-shirt for $15 and if we want to include the Nike swoosh, we subtract $2 as Nike will pay us to wear their logo…. branding at it’s finest and money well spent from Nike.

User Interface (UI) design is very important to an application both in terms of aesthetics and rate of adoption. If the UI is complicated, most often the application will not be adopted by the masses and a competitor will come in, develop something much simpler to use, hence the folks at 37 Signals are having such great success.

The influx of widgets into today’s marketplace are making sites come alive, but for them to become adopted by the masses, they must serve a purpose (need) and must look visually appealing (you wouldn’t want to put something ugly on your site or blog). I cannot stress how important it is for your website or webplication/widget to not only function correctly but also, to have an incredible UI design.

Good design is a clear differentiator in most market verticals. If you’re a company with a good product design or site design, you’ll find that not only are users more apt to use your product, but they’re more likely to talk about it. Ikea doesn’t make the highest quality furniture, but the furniture they do make looks rather visually appealing. People always ask me where I got my desk from in my home office - Ikea…. viral.

You may know of a man nicknamed “Woz” or Steve Wozniak. For those of you who do not know him, he’s one of the original founders of Apple Computer and the original Apple I and Apple II creator alongside Steve Jobs. In a recent interview with Guy Kawasaki of Garage Ventures, he talked about Apple and what he has been up to over the years. One of the statements he made in the interview was regarding design theory and he simply said, “Create what you want to use.”
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