shop ghost - Mirrored sunglasses!!! Ok we won't say anything more...
We love the slew of online shopping guide websites that have popped up recently. We guess you could see them as an appropriation of those lovely shopping pages - the domain of the Market editor - at the front of a magazine. Those pages are always the best, the ones that you flick straight through and dissect immediately. What theme are they doing? What pieces have they picket? What do you want? (Answer: always something, probably everything). These websites seem to have taken that idea and evolved it to suit the internet. There's Shop Ghost, the "online zine" started by ex-RUSSH editor (and Aussie expatriate) Stevie Dance, bringing together the kinds of things that everyone loves; having a little sticky beak into other people's closets (especially when those people are Emily Weiss, Phillip Lim and Garance Dore) and shopping online. Dance scours the internet for the best shopping picks which she then curates into themes. Like Mad Men, or Tortoise shell sunglasses and has even started doing mini photoshoots, like this one with baby-faced model of the moment Meag West, featuring cool-girl things like bandanas, silk bomber jackets and the perfect white tee shirt.
And then there's Feyt. We recently stumbled on this one and it was love at first sight. There's something a bit more sophisticated about this site - if Dance's Shop Ghost is all teenager making collages in her bedroom, Feyt is a Vogue America-reading woman getting blow-outs at the salon every 13 days. Feyt, too, works around themes, the kind of themes you always loved to see in the pages of glossies but never actually got to experience yourself. Such a what to wear to the Frieze art festival, and how to work head-to-toe blush colours. It's a super slick site that instantly draws you in, and there are plenty of shopping picks (around 40 for each theme) to choose from. Co-founders Ferebee Taube and Eleanor Ylvisaker say that their aim is to act as personal shopping guide to their favourite stores - Kirna Zabete, Net-A-Porter, Barneys and La Garconne, to name a few. Except here is the difference; their services are completely free.
We're not really sure what this trend means, but when it comes to online shopping, it's clear that the game is changing. From sites like Moda Operandi where you can pre-order straight off the runway, to the personal shopping services of Feyt (and you could even see Shop Ghost as offering a bit of that, too, albeit a lot friendlier, like that hip friend who always dressed so well sharing her favourite things over an afternoon chai tea), online shopping continues to grow and grow and grow. It makes us think, what's next?