Article Feature: Darshanan Govender

from the

-Daily Fashion Paper Back-

Social Media In Fashion:
Darshanan Govender

“Fashion has always been a repetition of ideas... but what makes it new is the way you put it together”

The same applies to how we create the communities we associate ourselves with. Many of us have created our own communities online, whether it is Instagram, Facebook or blogs, we regard these people as our community, the pages we like and people we “follow”. Community has a great impact on fashions that we see today because we are gathering what we see from others and adding our own twist onto it and calling it our own, changing what is currently in fashion.  The most influential is social media because we know this is the way forward in reaching and connecting millions of people.

Each day every one of us, no matter what career or life path sees something different, it may have been online or on the streets. We remember the things we like and the things we don’t, and after that automatically we seek out what has had a positive influence.

I started following fashion trends by starting a blog via Tumblr. After a while I started communicating with the people who ran other blogs and built online friendships with them. I know South Africa tends to receive fashion trends later than anywhere else, so I use this as a gateway to discover upcoming trends and incorporate that into my style and dress. Building relations like this should be motivated by the fact that we do influence each other more than we think.

Social media plays a large role in marketing and brand testing especially for new brands, products and projects. From experience I was able to use this with marketing pocket squares internationally. I discovered what people fancy and what items to decrease in production, simply by asking my instagram and blog community. I took advice from people whom I have never met and it has definitely had a positive impact. Who better to ask

than such a vast community and people with different perspectives? I can only imagine how these communities have impacted other businesses in a similar way. Larger, more established businesses would benefit greatly from this kind of response and information. It would be good to see this happen more often.

Darshanan Govender
smokingclothing.tumblr.com