Net fashion sense

Hate waiting for those glossy, high-priced magazines to hit the newsstands to discover the upcoming fashion trends? Then turn to the Internet to get your fashion fix. Mercedes Benz Fashion Week has taken over New York’s runways from Sept. 5-12. Independent Fashion Bloggers covering fashion week behind the scenes can be accessed from a new online destination — InsideTheTents.com. The site features up to the minute coverage from more than 30 of fashion’s top bloggers attending and reporting on the New York runways.

Using the latest social networking technologies, InsideTheTents is publishing interviews, photos and video throughout the week as well as live text updates to services such as Twitter. Visitors are able to follow all the action via live updates at the InsideTheTents.com site. Coverage includes designer and celebrity interviews, feedback from attendees, insight from fashion experts and advice for taking the runway to everyday.

And for some immediate insight into the top 10 colors for women’s fashion for spring 2009, along with designer sketches, quotes and headshots, don’t miss the Pantone Fashion Color Report Spring 2009 free of charge from www.pantone.com/spring2009. According to the report, blue and purple lead the top 10 hues for spring ‘09. The palette also includes pops of vibrant color representing the optimism of the season, combined with sophisticated neutrals to ground the palette and provide stability in an unpredictable economic climate. A spectrum of greens rounds out the most popular colors, evoking a sense of freshness and new beginnings for spring.

As with everything in this digital age, when discussing color, it’s essential to refer to a specific hue which can be reproduced exactly, whether in fabric, on a magazine page or at a website.

Globally, fashion designers, graphic designers and printing houses use the Pantone color matching system to ensure that the correct color is visualized across all media. So to be more specific, the top 10 spring ‘09 Pantone colors for women are: 18-4043 Palace Blue, 14-1307 Rose Dust, 15-3817 Lavender, 16-5804 Slate Gray, 14-0754 Super Lemon, 16-6339 Vibrant Green, 15-1626 Salmon Rose, 16-0435 Dark Citron, 18-2328 Fuchsia Red and 14-5714 Lucite Green.

Don’t know what those shades might be? Click to www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx for some fashion color intelligence.

Turkey growth

According to Pyramid Research, Turkey is the largest telecom market in the Africa/Middle East region with total revenue of 14.7 billion in 2007. Pyramid expects the market to grow at a 2.5 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, generating $17.0 billion by 2013.

Telecom boom

The International Telecommunication Union’s “2008 Asia Pacific Telecommunications and ICT Indicators Report” shows that the Asia-Pacific region is home to an increasing number of new telecom users, many under the age of 18, with expectations and behavior that radically challenge existing technology design. With over two billion telephones, including 1.4 billion mobile subscribers, and 42 percent of the world’s Internet users, Asia is a region of superlatives in the ICT arena. China and India alone now have over 600 and 280 million mobile cellular subscribers, respectively, representing close to a quarter of the world’s total. It is also the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 percent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007. This has led to the uptake of a variety of advanced Internet technologies.

Yet, there is a stark contrast between the region’s high-income economies and the low and lower-middle income economies, where progression towards fixed and mobile broadband is slow and Internet access is limited and costly.

While most of the region’s high-income economies have launched mobile broadband networks, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) found that few of the low and lower-middle income economies have done so. See the presentation from last week’s ITU Telecom Asia 2008 at www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/asia/2008/index.html.

Check prices online

A comScore Survey on the “State of the US Retail Economy” found that American consumers in all income segments have been cutting back on spending due to concerns about the economy, and that they were doing so to an even greater extent in July 2008 than in April 2008.

While spending cutbacks have been reported by a greater percentage of people in the lower income brackets, concern is also catching up with the highest income bracket, which showed the greatest increase in cutbacks over the time period analyzed.

With consumers increasingly cost conscious, many are turning to the Internet for pricing information.

The survey findings revealed that nearly three out of four US consumers believe the Internet has made it “a lot easier” or “somewhat easier” to find better, more useful pricing information.

Additionally, 75 percent of respondents said they believe the Internet will become an even more important channel for pricing information, with 41 percent of respondents saying it will be “a lot more important” and 34 percent of respondents saying it will be “somewhat more important” in the future.

New initiative

Could your shopping save the planet? From the online marketplace eBay comes a new ecommerce destination called WorldofGood.com by eBay, which offers products that have a positive impact on people and the planet, empowering consumers to align their social values with their shopping.

Whether consumers are looking to purchase products made from recycled or natural materials, buy organic or support artisan women in developing nations, WorldofGood.com offers a new level of confidence and transparency in the socially responsible shopping experience.

At WorldofGood.com products, producers and sellers are verified by various third parties called Trust Providers to meet a core set of ethical and environmental standards.

“People Positive” and “Eco Positive” items offered on WorldofGood.com span 15 categories such as home and garden, art, jewelry, clothing and even food items.

For example, socially responsible shoppers can purchase fair trade coffee, accessories and home decor items made from recycled materials, organic clothing and animal-friendly beauty products on the site.

Many products on the new marketplace are handcrafted by artisans across the world, positively impacting marginalized communities in developing nations. All WorldofGood.com listings are also available on eBay.com, bringing these socially responsible products to eBay’s more than 84 million users worldwide.