Fashion designer Derek Lam's crowd-selected dress collection is now on sale exclusively on eBay.
The collection features five warm-weather dresses chosen from an original cast of 16, which were unveiled simultaneously at New York Fashion Week headquarters in Lincoln Center and on ebay.com in February.
eBay users cast more than 120,000 votes to determine the five dresses now on sale, which come in sizes zero to 16 and range in price from $125.00 to $295.00 -- by no means cheap, but substantially less expensive than the $1,000+ prices commanded by Lam’s primary collection.
A surprise sixth "Tee Shirt" dress has been added to the collection in two fabrics, available for purchase solely through the eBay Fashion app [iTunes link] for iPhone.
As we noted previously, what’s unusual about the initiative is not that Lam is producing a one-off collection for eBay -- big-name designers like Vera Wang and Alber Elbaz of Lanvin have partnered with the likes of H&M and Target in similar initiatives in the past -- but that consumers are getting a say in what part of the collection makes it to market. Since the birth of the ready-to-wear industry, fashion editors and department store buyers — not consumers -- have determined what of a designer’s collection gets produced.
Now, thanks to a more social web culture and online tools for voting and purchasing, consumers are getting the opportunity to decide (collectively, at least) what items are manufactured, whilst merchandisers are able to more accurately estimate demand and adjust production accordingly.
Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann, chief executive officer of Derek Lam International, said that the initiative was valuable in part because it allowed the label to "discover what our customers desire from an accessible, contemporary line" -- data that could be useful should Derek Lam decide to launch such a line in the near future.