Lookbooks

The fashion industry is one that I never really thought much of.  It's not something I have much knowledge of, and I never even considered the possibilities for media integration.  However, the people of Lookbooks have done exactly that, creating a dynamic and well-designed system for photographers, models, and artists alike.

We were first received by Arun Kalaiselvan, a former graduate of NYU Poly's IDM program.  His co-worker, Ryan, was the CEO, and was the one who spoke for most of the presentation.  Ryan, a Canadian native, originally studied Chemistry in college, and worked for companies like Johnson & Johnson.  He chose to start a company like Lookbooks because of his experience in the fashion industry.

This is a lookbook.  To someone in the fashion, beauty, and fine art field, this means everything!

Lookbooks is a company that provides integrated digital media and marketing solutions to some of the biggest names in fashion, beauty, photography, design and fine art.  Through this, clients can manage a portfolio for other employers to see.  It is not a media company by the strictest definition; rather, it is seen more as a content developer.  FashionIndie.com, one of the leading websites for the latest fashion trends, is also owned by Lookbooks, although it is still independent of the main site.

The majority of the services are hosted through the main site, lookbooks.com.  All services are maintained through the Cloud, therefore most of the updates are done automatically.  Their idea is that if you build it once, they will use it forever, because according to them, "you don't build a product and change behavior; you change behavior and build the product accordingly".

Although Lookbooks is centered mainly in fashion and fine art, it is not centered in that niche.  In fact, Ryan believes that if you niche yourself in one industry, you're dead, and that it's best not to get too deep into one thing.

The sheer amount of integration that Lookbooks uses is amazing.  They seemed to have formulated creative and fully-usable solutions to everything.  This trip really gave us a look at an industry that media definitely has room to flourish!