The Fashion Spy

The Vogue September issue is always a FAT one but this one is clocking in at a record 727 advertising pages! Good Job Anna! That "extra-extra large!" size, as the cover proudly proclaims, is more than 100 pages fatter than last year and seems to provide evidence of a healthy appetite for print advertising in the fashion industry.

Most of those pages were sold with the added value of an Internet feature that Vogue is introducing today: a broadband channel that aims to serve as both an entertainment destination and a shopping Web site.

ShopVogue.TV offers links to purchase the products featured in the magazine's print ads, while simultaneously showing videos of runway shows, fashion ad campaigns and serial shows created by Vogue. The channel will also have a user-generated component, with visitors encouraged to upload photos of their own fashion looks in an area designated Fashion U Share.

For Vogue, which is owned by the Conde Nast Publications unit of Advance Publications, the channel is a major push into the world of fashion-related video entertainment; the channel will start with more than 240 minutes of original online-video content. own fashion looks in an area designated Fashion U Share.

At the new site, visitors will be able to shop by brand, trend, department or even price (an option that Vogue expects to become especially popular after November, when the channel will be refreshed for the holiday shopping season.) And videos from recent runway shows will also appear online, allowing visitors to see--and purchase--fashions from the current season.

Each advertiser that purchased a national-ad page in the September issue qualified for inclusion on the Web site. Advertisers that bought multipage spreads were permitted to post additional content, like behind-the-scenes video from their campaign's photo shoots. Visitors can get an inside look at the making of a glamorous fashion ad and, if the spirit moves them, buy the product being advertised as well.

But Vogue is emphasizing the channel's entertainment value over its pure advertising impact. "We really wanted to make it feel like a program, not an advertorial," Florio said of the new shows. "We don't want to be in a business that's about selling goods online. We're in a branding business."

ShopVogue.TV is not technically a retail site; the "shop" function allows visitors to click through to the Web sites of the advertisers or their online-merchant partners. Vogue does not take a cut of any of the sales made through its site.

Vogue expects to draw about half a million visitors to the channel in the first few months, or first "season." The channel will be advertised on fashion Web sites, on the sides of 270 Manhattan buses and, of course, in the print pages of the September Vogue issue.

Visit shopvogue.tv NOW! Source: The New York Times