Bespectacled fashionistas in Tokyo, Dubai, New York, L.A., and Paris gathered Tuesday to witness a fashion (and tech) world first: Burberry streamed its Fall 2010 runway show live in 3D, becoming the first major fashion house to do so.
In addition to the 3-D simulcasts, Burberry also live-streamed the Prorsum show on its website, as well as some 70 other sites, including Sky News, CNN, The Times and The Daily Beast, and invited guest bloggers to tweet from Burberry's Twitter account.
Perhaps more importantly from a commercial standpoint,the fashion house also tried out new tech that would not only enable more people to see the collection, but to buy it as well. The Wall Street Journal explains: "major pieces from the collection started selling immediately after the show on the company's Web site; buyers won't have to wait the six months for the clothes to hit stores to get them in their hands."
Tuesday morning in rainy New York, a mix of editors and socials who couldn't make it to London headed to SoHo's Skylight Studio, where they were greeted by men in Burberry trenches and escorted inside under Burberry umbrellas. After a twenty-minute pre-show (also in 3-D) including interviews with Anna Wintour (who pronounced the brand "Burberry's"), Mary-Kate Olsen (who proved a tedious interview) and Kate Hudson (who said her movie characters tend to wear the trench), the show finally began. And while it never quite felt as though the models were walking at the crowd, as some expected, all in the room seemed to agree the venture into high-style tech was a hit.
PHOTOS (Neil Rasmus/PatrickMcMullan):