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Everything about Dior's resort show outside London on Tuesday was tailor-made to take over Instagram, from the Dior Express train that whisked guests to the venue at Blenheim Palace to the pub at which they ate. The same was true for Louis Vuitton's runway show on Saturday, staged at the stunning, UFO-like setting of Rio de Janeiro's Niterói Contemporary Art museum, or Chanel's brightly colored and controversial Cuban extravaganza.
Surprisingly, Michael Kors is going in the opposite direction. Perhaps sensing just how little attention is being paid to the clothes, the Daily Front Row reports that the brand is imposing a social media ban for its June 7th resort presentation. A few images will be released the day of appointments, and you can see the rest of it in October, when it's available for purchase.
"We feel our clients and fans will love getting a sneak peek of the collection as opposed to inundating them with too much imagery too soon," Kors told the Daily Front Row. "Ultimately, this is all about creating more excitement when the product is available."
That fits with fashion's crisis over its current business model and the complaint that social media's instantaneous blast of images leads consumers to become bored with clothes once they finally hit stores. Alexander Wang is also trying a convoluted version of "see now, buy now" for Resort 2017, asking that the retailers or editors who see the collection in June not report or write anything about the images until November.
So designers this season seem to be gravitating toward two, very different options: 1) full-on Instagram extravaganza of a Resort collection or 2) try to keep everything under wraps entirely until the moment the collection lands in stores. It's just one more sign that there isn't a one size fits all approach to the fashion business, meaning the industry's about to get a lot more interesting.