Just in time for New York Fashion Week 2020 season, (followed by European fashion weeks) You Tube has officially launched a dedicated fashion vertical, YouTube.com/Fashion aiming to better organise fashion, style and beauty content.
Already being referred to as /Fashion—”slash fashion” to those in the know, it will feature original content from the biggest names in the industry, as well as the popular content users have come to expect from YouTube – creator vlogs, live streams from the runway and behind-the-scenes content and more.
According to Derek Blasberg, Director of YouTube Fashion and Beauty
“The aim for the hub is to create an ultimate destination for style content that bridges both our fabulous endemic creator community and the more traditional worlds of fashion and beauty. My hope is that anyone looking for all things style will now have a place to come and be inspired by what they see.”
Beauty is booming
It’s not surprising that YouTube is investing more in its fashion focus. The number of fashion and beauty channels grew over six times from 2014 to 2018, and generated billions of views last year alone. In August, YouTube launched a new tool that uses AR to let you try on makeup.
Much like /Music and /Gaming, which are established verticals on YouTube, they want to carve out a special destination for their users.
For those who have been paying attention, YouTube’s has been leading up to this for quite some time. In the past few months, an array of fashion personalities have launched personal YouTube pages dedicated to sharing behind-the-scenes footage of their lives and work, including Lily Aldridge, Victoria Beckham, and Naomi Campbell. (Can’t recommend Naomi’s channel enough!)
It will be interesting to see how this fashion vertical will play out.
Whilst Youtube has the beauty space down-pat, Instagram has become the go-to fashion platform for inspiration – even more so since it entered the e-commerce market.
Locally, Aussie brands have been all over Instagram shopping since it was launched. (unfortunately for my bank balance)
Will local brands and creators jump on /fashion?
It’s hard to say. Instagram makes more sense commercially for high street brands like Witchery or Forever New. But for higher end brands like Zimmerman or Camilla (Beyoncé is huge fan) youtube/fashion may allow them to break even further into international markets. This could be a game changer.
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