Reflections on Assembled Fashion 2011 

On a crisp Fall Saturday, fashionistas and technistas gathered in the pristine white event space of the General Assembly. A packed room, with what one participant described as the best looking handbags in New York City, I was in awe that so many had come out to talk shop on the intersection between social media and fashion.
            Amanda spoke on a panel about the emergence of flash and private sale sites along with Gilt Groupe’s Jyothi Rao, and Picki Picki’s Abi Muller. It was moderated by Bloomberg TV’s Hitha Prabhakar. I tagged along as Amanda’s web and social media gal, and found myself getting schooled. I learned so much from panels such as “Rise of the Social Media Brand” and “Content to Commerce” and thought I should share a few lessons with you.

1.     Know your audience and how to reach them.

2.     Listen. What does your audience want from you?

3.     Teach your CEO to expect failure. Try everything and don’t get left behind.

4.     The way forward is to be platform agnostic. Social media should be able to work on several devices.

5.     Partnerships are a great way to get ahead with social media. Pair up with bloggers for instance.

All round a great event. I hadn’t seen so many geeks and fashionistas gathered in one place, and it was a joy to behold. Technology was on lock-down, everyone toting their smartphones and ipads, tweets of the event running concurrently with the panel discussions. And it was refreshing to see a large female presence.  Amanda thoroughly enjoyed herself and brought wonderful perspective to the panel when she talked about how sometimes a little caution is needed because exclusivity is still key for big department stores. Amanda is available for speaking engagements, and if you’d like to book her, email info@amandauprichard.com

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