Lady LUX

Balenciaga is taking a big, giant leap. A digital one, that is.

The French label has ditched its old-fashioned website in favor of a glitzy new one to be launched this week, reported WWD. Ready to handle e-commerce in the United States, France and the U.K., the new Web platform will vend the brand’s entire product line, including runway ready-to-wear. Imagery, rather than text, commands the swanky website, which features more than 3,000 photographs and 200 videos.

“It’s important to be able to show things in movement,” Nicolas Ghesquière, the PPR-owned luxury label’s creative director, said to WWD. “It’s almost like a daily magazine now: It has to be really alive. Like everyone, we want to have a good amount of traffic.”

Ghesquière plans to commission well-known visual artists and photographers to shoot and produce short movies for the site. Created by Steven Meisel, the first film showcases Balenciaga’s resort collection. Ghesquière also intends to post a number of videos that offer an inside glimpse into his campaign shoots and shows. Kate Berry will be the first to go behind the scenes and capture the backstage madness.

The idea, said Ghesquière, is to deliver as much information as possible – almost like a television channel.

“I like the idea we can watch Balenciaga,” he declared.

The creative director is excited by the possibilities of the Internet, especially its potential to reach an international audience, and believes the time and technology are ripe. Tablet devices can quickly deliver high-definition images so detailed, you can see the quality of a leather. He intends to take full advantage of such technological advances.

“It’s very serious. I love that as a perfectionist. I think it’s great to show how much we work on the quality,” he said. “It was important to make it beautiful, sharp and very functional and technical, too.”

The new site boasts quite a few new attributes, including many full-screen options and the ubiquitous presence of top models.

“There is a lot to look at,” Ghesquière said, noting a particular favorite: a shot of a wedding dress from 1967, created by founding designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. The image appears in the site’s heritage section, which also features classic stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman wearing looks for the silver screen.

The main features of the site, however, revolve around the brand’s contemporary goods, offering the chance to share, buy or view in full-screen each available item, whether from menswear, capsule collections or accessories.

The company intends to further its digital expansion by making e-commerce available to other European countries and Japan, and by ramping up its Twitter activity and enhancing the imagery on its new Facebook page, which was recently wrested away from an unknown user, who had attracted more than 250,000 fans.

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