As Paris fashion week comes to an end, buyers, clients and critics return home, and designers begin their preparations for the next round of shows. But for many fashion and style Web sites, the work has just begun — writers will spend the next several months recapping and analyzing the standout looks from the runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris and relating them to trends and wearable styles for this upcoming spring.
Online fashion commentary, which has grown significantly in recent years, has become very important as more and more fashion enthusiasts look to the internet for images, information and trends from their favorite designers' shows. As a result, many of the industry's leading publications, such as Vogue Magazine, have developed Web sites that provide exhaustive coverage of everything pertaining to fashion.
Many of these Web sites, however, were started independently. The Supermelon, which was created by Tufts senior Patrick Lee in 2008, covers fashion, style, arts, travel and music. The site has grown a great deal since its inception and features articles by several Tufts students as well as professionals from a variety of fields.
The Superwhat?
The Supermelon, or TSM, is an online lifestyle magazine geared towards young, fabulously chic fashionistas. Lee and his two friends, Hanna Kim and Paul Lee, first launched TSM in July 2008. Lee and his co-founders were inspired by their belief that many of the lifestyle publications currently available did not have enough quality content for young female readers.
"We didn't want a Web site with celebrity gossip and nonsense," said Lee. "We wanted a Web site with exciting, fun and relevant information." Lee and his friends decided to name their site "The Supermelon" because they "wanted a name that was fun, simple and quirky," said Lee.
"When you hear [The Supermelon], you want to know what it is. The name reflects our content — it's fresh, different and memorable," Lee added.
In just a little over a year, what started as an idea among friends grew to a working Web site with a staff of four management board members and twenty staff writers. Lee is currently the managing editor for TSM and the only college student on the board.
Many of the Web site's staff members are young professionals who are already pursuing careers in the world of arts and fashion and contribute to TSM "as a side thing they do for fun," said Lee.
Although TSM tends towards high-end fashion, Lee noted that the Web site tries to attract both students and young professional women between the ages of 18 and 35. Lee says that many of the articles discussing new fashion trends try to include both higher- and lower-priced designer items in order to make their Web site more accessible to young women who may not have large disposable incomes.
Contributing columnist Catherine Addo noted the wide appeal of TSM: "The Supermelon is great at being international and tying in all trends … it's current and very fashion-forward," said Addo.
A Fresh Take on Style
One of TSM's more popular pages is "Fresh Talk," which features interviews with prominent individuals who are making a splash the world of arts, fashion and music.
In the past, interviews have included the up-and-coming singer/songwriter Matt Kearney and Manhattan-based fashion writer Julia Frakes. TSM has even had the chance to rub elbows with a few more notable fashion icons like famed photographer Scott Schuman, whose influential blog "The Sartorialist" has become a staple for any aspiring fashionista.
TSM is also known for its "Real Style" page, which features an array of emerging fashion connoisseurs whose blogs highlight their unique senses of personal style.
One article profiled "Street Etiquette" bloggers Travis "Trav" Gumbs and Joshua "JKISSI" Kissi, who are known to blend refined clothing with touches of their urban, New York City roots.
Another article profiled the fashion-forward Parisian art history student Louise Ebel, whose eclectically chic style makes every girl wish she lived in Paris. TSM most recently snagged an interview with the sixteen-year-old style guru Jane Aldridge, whose fashion blog "Sea of Shoes" receives upward of 10,000 hits a day.
Two other popular pages on the Web site include "Music Rack," a seasonal playlist of 15 to 17 songs that combines mainstream music, work by newer artists and popular remixes, and "Passport to…," the perfect destination tour guide for fashion-conscious jet-setters.
Lee believes these pages are some of the site's most popular because "we give a really interesting look at our topics. We sort of cut through the fluff and the b.s. and get straight to it."
"We're very honest, and we're not going to wasting our time publishing things not worth reading," he added.
A Guide to the Fashionable Life
The Supermelon is divided into five major sections: style, trends, art, travel and forum. Each section is covered by the Web site's writers except for the forum, in which visitors can post their own opinions and answers to the Web site's questions.
For those seriously interested in fashion, the style and trends sections of the Web site are the most informative. These two sections cover designers' shows as well as the important individuals and developments that are shaping the industry.
Recent posts in the style and trends sections examined a furniture collection and a new clothing line. The Web site's writers analyzed the trends — such as the recent infusion of bright orange colors into designers' collections — that influenced several of the items and then suggested ways that viewers can incorporate the particular trend into their homes and wardrobes.
TSM's art section covers special exhibitions in museums like the current Kandinsky exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. It also follows major events in the industry such as influential shows and auctions, and, most notably, describes those instances when the fashion and art industries overlap. One example is exhibitions in which designs from some of the world's most famous fashion houses influenced or were transformed into works of art.
The travel section presents city profiles and travel news in a similar format to the rest of the Web site, including city guides with sightseeing, hotel and dining recommendations for some of the world's most exotic locales, ranging from Manila to Maui.
Columns of Style
Columnists contribute regularly to TSM's online content. Their work includes "Sweet and Sour," a weekly column written by New York-based Addo, which takes current fashion trends and weighs their "sweet" pros and "sour" cons.
Addo notes that although her column may inherently attract more girls from cities like New York and L.A. where fashion tends to take more risks, other readers can also relate to "Sweet and Sour" because "it deals with people in whatever market they're in."
"I think of [my column] as the voice inside my head," said Addo. "Of course I love staying up on trends and seeing what's new, but I'm also a real person. I'm not a model, so I have to kind of think about what works with my lifestyle."
Lumay Wang, a junior at Tufts, has been writing a column for TSM for over a year called Pretty Young Thing (PYT). Wang describes her column as a style, fashion and shopping column.
Wang got involved with TSM after the Lee read several of her Tufts Daily columns. Entitled The Daily Shopper, Wang's column ran in 2008.
For PYT, Wang said, "I take inspiration from the runways, kind of my current obsession, and translate into how it's wearable, how it's not wearable and give a couple examples that I like that are currently on the market."
She said that TSM tries to be a reliable source on latest trends, in terms of style, art, travel and shopping. To that end, she tries to cater her columns to the Web site's audience.
Wang noted that college students may have trouble relating to some of the Web site's content because of its focus on high-price items. "The demographic that I'm trying to hit is pretty much young professionals," she said.
Wang also commented on the Web site's flexibility. "They give me a lot of leeway, which is good. I appreciate that as a writer," she said.
Fashion Forward
According to Lee, TSM strives "to be that one stop source for useful quality information" on all things arts and leisure, but its founders have even bigger hopes for the online lifestyle publication's future.
"We're trying to find ways to make the website more user-friendly and looking to add some aesthetic enhancements to the layout as well," Lee said. "On the content side, we're going to keep delivering quality articles, hopefully with more high-profile names as we move forward."
