New York’s fall Fashion Week is only a week away, and like in past years, technology companies are hoping to get in on the action.
Google (GOOGL) on Thursday said that it would showcase human curated results for fashion related searches during the event. Users who enter queries for designers like Burberry will see video and images from runway shows and links to related sites above the usual list of algorithmically generated results.
The curated results will be created with input from the designers and brands themselves. Users will be able to buy items directly from certain designers through the search page.
The “experiment” is designed to help brands and designers connect directly to potential buyers and fans, according to the The New York Times. The addition of human curated content also represents a detour from the purely algorithmic focus that Google has relied on for search results over the years.
Google has partnered on the project with clothing companies Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Prada, Burberry, and Hermès. The new look was created by former Maxim editor Kate Lanphear.
It’s unclear whether there is a financial agreement to the partnerships with brands.
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For the past few years, Facebook-owned Instagram has been a dominant new medium in Fashion Week coverage, with designers, models and other fashion industry insiders flocking to the app to share photos and behind the scenes videos with fans. Millennial favorite Snapchat has also started curating “stories” around Fashion Week events.
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Google hasn’t completely ignored Fashion Week in the past. In 2012, the company showed up Google Glass, its Internet-connected glasses, on the runways via a partnership with famed designer Diane Von Furstenberg. Of course, Glass ended up as a massive flop.
But with billions of searches daily, Google could have an interesting vantage point to showcase content (and commerce) from designers. The new feature “brings fashion week to life in a new way,” Google product manager Cameron McKnight told The New York Times.
