Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week to Live Stream Over Thirty Spring 2012 Runway Shows

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week has gone digital!! With the help of You Tube and Maybelline those of us who will not be in New York City will have the opportunity to watch real-time live stream feeds of fashion week. “This is a tremendous opportunity to bring designers show’s to a much wider audience via the world’s number one destination online for video content,” said Christina Neault, Executive Producer of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. “We’re excited to work with YouTube and Maybelline New York to promote the event and its incredible roster of shows.”

Here are all of the details you need to participate in one of the largest worldwide, semi-annual fashion events. Thursday, September 8th through September 15, 2011 is Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (MBFW) in New York City! For one week, hundreds of American fashion designers showcase their Spring/Summer 2012 ready-to-wear collections to the media. It is a week packed full of fashion shows, Fashion’s Night Out shopping and parties. Industry leaders like magazine editors, critics, buyers, media correspondents, and fashionistas from all over the world flock to New York City for a first look at the new clothing from veteran and new designers. It is here that editors, journalists, writers and bloggers get the inside scoop on next season’s fashion trends: colors, textures, silhouettes, shoes, handbags and accessories.

Although we would obviously rather be in NYC, learning how to tap into the excitement from anywhere in the world is a valuable experience as well. While those in NYC are watching from the Lincoln Center and other iconic venues in NYC, you and I will be watching from our homes or wherever you may be with our cell phones, iPads or mobile devices.

Two other tools have helped veterans viewers of fashion week live stream in past years when it was much more difficult to find various live stream schedules and locations. In addition to the new and improved You Tube/Mabelline live stream, Nowfashion.com and Catwalklive.tv are two additional highly recommended fashion week resources. They will also help us keep in touch with live stream shows and stills from upcoming London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks.

Below is a quick resource guide to help make sure your live stream MBFW fashion week experience goes on without a hitch:

PRE-FASHION WEEK SET-UP:

1) Choose which shows you want to watch live at MBFW’s digital schedule. Keep in mind that the times are in New York’s Eastern Standard Time (EST). Here is a time zone conversion tool to help you convert New York time to wherever you may be in the world. In the first box where it says “Select time and place to convert from,” select “U.S.A. — New York – New York.” Just above, insert the date and time of the show you want to watch. Just below, insert your time zone. Then, click on the “Convert time” button for the conversion.

2) Register for a You Tube account, if you do not have one already. I believe this is required to participate.

3) If you already have a You Tube account, make sure your login and password are handy as you will need to be logged in on the day you watch a fashion show.

4) Subscribe to the live stream channel at www.youtube.com/liverunway from your computer or m.youtube.com/liverunway from your mobile device.

WATCH A LIVE STREAM SHOW:

1) Go to www.youtube.com/liverunway from your computer, or m.youtube.com/liverunway from your mobile device, a few minutes early. If you have already done the above set-up, I only recommend going to You Tube a few of minutes early because fashion shows typically start late. You can tell when it is about to begin after they start to roll up the plastic off the runway.

2) Make sure you are subscribed to the You Tube channel. This only needs to be done once.

3) Log into the channel’s comment box via Facebook or Twitter so that you can instantly share your thoughts and reactions before and during each fashion show with others from all over the world. This has to be done each time you log into your You Tube account.

4) To participate in Chic Galleria’s MBFW Twitter Event, login through twitter at the comment box. Add #MBFWchicgalleria hashtag at the end of every comment so that all of your comments will appear on twitter searches for #MBFW and “Chic Galleria’s MBFW Live Stream Twitter Event.”

FOR MORE LIVE FASHION WEEK EXPOSURE:

1) Compare the shows you plan to watch from the MBFW’s digital schedule against the NowFashion.com schedule. Get accustomed to the Now Fashion website. On their calendar, hover over the dates from September 7th to 15th to see which designers’ collections they have scheduled to publish photos real-time. As you click on each designer’s fashion show link, you will be directed to the page where the real-time photos are due to publish. It is here you see when the fashion show will publish live, with the help of a countdown feature. Their home page also shows the countdown for the next show to publish at the top bar. Hover over the bar to view the countdown for each fashion show next in line to publish live. Now Fashion offers real-time viewing of MBFW fashion stills for many more shows than the You Tube/Maybelline live stream offers. It’s quite a feast for the eyes to see these real-time photos appear one-by-one as each model nears the end of the runway.

2) Catwalklive.tv has also been a very helpful resource in past years, when finding the live stream shows was more difficult. They provide the complete MBFW schedule and specify which shows are available via live stream, providing the link to the location. If you follow their Twitter @catwalklivetv, they will tweet reminders and schedule updates. These reminders are especially helpful to alert you that a live stream show is soon to begin. Install twitter mobile app to get these notifications sent to your phone or mobile device at twitter.com/download. Catwalk Live.tv also has a fashion week plugin. At catwalklive.tv, click on “Add schedules to your website” at the bottom of their home page to grab the embed code so that you can place on your website or blog. This is a great way to be reminded of the live stream schedule for each day, directly from your website, blog, iGoogle, NetVibes, etc.

3) The wonderful thing about Now Fashion and Catwalk Live.tv is that they will also help us watch all of the live stream fashion shows from London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Weeks, to commence on September 16th, the day after MBFW ends.

VIEW ARCHIVED FASHION SHOWS OR STILLS:

1) If you missed a live fashion show or want to view it again, watch it later on your computer at www.youtube.com/liverunway or on your mobile device at m.youtube.com/liverunway. As a result of Maybelline New York’s exclusive backstage access, they will also upload supplemental videos of their correspondents giving interviews, reporting on the makeup and hairstyles of the models, explaining the fashion trends and providing how-to beauty clips.

2) Go to Now Fashion’s archive to view all of the previously published Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012 collections.

USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO ENHANCE YOUR FASHION WEEK EXPERIENCE:

1) Now Fashion allows you to add all of your favorite fashion week looks to your very own virtual look books. While you are viewing any designer’s collection, the moment something you love enters the queue click on the star underneath to add it to your look book. If you are not registered or logged into Now Fashion, a pop-up asks you to do so. Login through Facebook, Twitter, or Google account option makes registering and logging in easy and quick. Here is one that I made for Lace for F/W 2011-12.

2) Style.com also allows you to create look books from any of the designers’ collections. Just click on any designer you want to view their slideshow and click on “save it to look book.” Registering to Style.com also gives you access to a multitude of other Conde Nast resources.

3) Talk about all of your favorite Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week finds for spring in your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Talk it up just like all of the big leagues in New York.

4) Keep an eye on what everyone on Twitter is saying about fashion week by searching hashtags #MBFW or #NYFW. Even though the official hashtag is #MBFW, #NYFW is also widely used. Doing so, you may catch what people like Anna Wintour and Joe Zee are saying about the looks and their attempt to get from one show to the next. The tweetesphere begins to be inundated with everyone’s comments from all over the world as early as the morning of September 8th.

5) Frequently tweet @chicgalleria with your reactions and/or add #MBFWchicgalleria hashtag at the end of your tweet. At any time during fashion week search #MBFWchicgalleria on Twitter to view all of the buzz and fashion week excitement from our Chic Galleria community.

It may be an odd concept for those new to fashion week to watch next spring’s collection at the time we are really just now approaching the fall season. I promise that any awkwardness you may have with this concept will fade as you jump into the fun! If anyone needs help, feel free to tweet me at @chicgalleria and I’ll do my best to help you.

Don’t forget that we can all look forward to hearing from our Chic Galleria staff and interns in New York City. Can’t wait to hear all the scoop they discover on-location about fashion week and Fashion’s Night Out.

Lastly, but (definitely) not least, comment below to let us know about all of your Spring 2012 virtual look books or blog posts. Mention all of your links below so that we can see what you loved from fashion week! If there are enough responses, I might feature some of them in a post-fashion week article next month.

(Photo courtesy of kentuckyfolkweb.com, feat. fashion show producer Stefan Campbell)

Suzanne Crumbacher, Social Media Director and Style & Beauty Writer for Chic Galleria, has a certificate in Fashion Design and a master’s degree from Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. She has traveled to Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, all over the U.S., one month stay in Hawaii, studied in Canada for 2 1/2 years and now resides in Oklahoma with her husband and two daughters. Suzanne loves social media interaction, so tweet her @ChicGalleria, join her Google+ Circle and follow as she blogs about being a writer for Chic Galleria on her personal Twitter & Tumblr. Read more Suzanne Crumbacher articles…