Lady Dior Baffles While it Entertains

Fashion firm Dior has just released the first “chapter” of Lady Dior, a series of videos starring Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard.

The video itself is lush and well-shot.  Cotillard, who gave one of the great performances ever in La Vie En Rose, isn’t asked to do much more than look gorgeous and mysterious, does just that with aplomb.

While the story is a bit vague, on purpose one would guess to keep us coming back for me, even more vague is Dior’s distribution strategy.

For starters, there is no way to embed the video elsewhere.  There are also no quick ways to share the link to Twitter, Delicious or any of the other social bookmarking services.  In fact, it appears that the only way to share the video provided on the Dior site is to email a friend the direct link.

Oh, it was also very weird that once the video begins there seems to be no way to pause or rewind.  This was strange considering most of this sort of viewing happens in an atmosphere where the need to pause and rewind can occur with frequency (like when the boss pops his head in).

It’s nice to see brands investing these sorts of resources into gorgeous video but it remains to be seen whether or not they have the ability to distribute these videos in such a way as to actually drive an increase in sales.

Let’s be honest, they’re not in it for the art.

The Strange Case of Gabe and Max (and Details)

One its own merits, there is nothing all that wrong with Gabe and Max’s Guide to Style, a sort of silly, campy webseries that pokes fun at male fashion and sexual ambiguity.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KfXU9A4t0g&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

The thing that is weird is that it is for Details Magazine, that actually tries to take both of the aforementioned topics pretty darn seriously.  It is almost like they decided to make a webseries that just made fun of everything their magazine stands for.

Adding insult to injury, less that 20,000 people have viewed episode one on YouTube and episode two hasn’t hit 3,000.

As a point of reference, there are currently 22,003 people watching the puppies.

Fashion Forward

There is a brief look over on PSFK at the willingness of the fashion industry to explore web video as a marketing tool.

“While a runway show lives for 30 mins at the most, and may be viewed a couple thousand times online, a short video can be created for mere pennies (of course, costs can run into the hundreds of thousands), uploaded to YouTube, gather millions of views around the globe, and live on forever.”

They have links to a few examples, as well.  I have to say that most of the stuff I’ve looked at has tended to be very pretty but not very original or remarkable.  The fashion industry is a great world for video since it is so visual and dynamic.  Now they need to pair up with some good writers to take it to the next level.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AjJnsnklbI&hl=en]