Tommy Hilfiger amped up its digital efforts on Monday for its California-inspired Spring/Summer 2014 collection debut at New York Fashion Week.
The designer and his team invited several "influencers," including Scott Schuman of street style blog The Sartoralist and Susie Lau of Style Bubble, to shoot the show using Lytro cameras. Photos taken with the cameras allow viewers to manipulate the focus, bringing a model's torso into focus in one click, and on the audience behind her in another. Those photos are being released through Tommy Hilfiger's Twitter account (see below), as well as through the blogs and social media profiles of the guest photographers.

And with that, another successful #NYFW comes to a close. Thank you, NY! #TommySpring14 http://t.co/vWDZVIyyBF
Perhaps even more neat — from an online reporter's perspective, at least — was the introduction of a "social concierge" program that allowed attendees to request photos, quotes and other assets from a team positioned around the runway and backstage. Attendees were notified of the service the evening before the show and could request assets before, during and after. To see how custom I could get, I e-mailed the team a half hour before the show start for a photo of Mr. Hilfiger with a model doing a thumbs up. The photo was delivered to my inbox before the first model hit the runway.

The team also delivered, at my request, a photo of the first look shown, as well as backstage photographs of models during hair and makeup preparations, the latter in just 11 minutes.
The program is designed to make it easier for press and other attendees to get the information they need and quickly — in time for them to tweet it live from the show in lieu of a blurry iPhone photo, even, or to make their print deadlines in Europe. It's particularly useful to journalists from smaller and/or international organizations who don't always have a photographer positioned in the media riser, Avery Baker, chief marketing officer at Tommy Hilfiger, told Mashable in a phone interview last week.
"Our main goal is to open up our runway show, to continue the democratization of the runway," Baker said.
I asked Hilfiger, who has been showing his collection for nearly three decades, how he sees the role of fashion week changing. "In years past, a fashion show was really for editors and buyers," Hilfiger says. "We really kept it as as exclusive as possible; [we did] not really want people, the public, [our] competitors to see styles till later on, after the show, or when clothes ended up in stores. It's a different world today."
"Today, we want to be very democratic, very inclusive," Hilfiger adds. "We would like anyone anything to do with fashion world, media world, tech world to see what we're doing." Thus the use of live-streaming video (see bottom) and the birth of the social concierge program, which is designed to give anyone a view into what's happening on the runway, backstage in "real-time," Hilfiger says.
If the goal is to reach a vast consumer audience, does it still make sense to have a show at all? I asked. Hilfiger thinks so: "I think if you're in the press, or a buyer, and you really want to see how the clothes flow on models, how styles are put together, and really want to be close to the fabrics and materials, it's needed." And no, Hilfiger doesn't believe high-resolution video is a substitute: "I think high-res cameras are great for automobiles, maybe tech products, different types of furniture, architecture. But when it comes to clothes — there's an emotional bond to clothes, through fabric, fit, feel. I think it is necessary to show clothes on models, moving down the runway... Buyers and press want to see how fabrics behave in real life."
If Hilfiger's twin goals are, then, to show buyers and press how his fabrics behave, and to bring as many consumers into the show as possible, his current show structure makes a good deal of sense. In future seasons, I hope the company will open up its social concierge program to its followers on social media — a move that would be truly democratic, not to mention exciting, for the designer's biggest fans.

Images: Tommy Hilfiger