Away from site; Fashion

Will the near future of shopping for clothes be merely a couple of scanning the world wide web, building a selection and hitting a but-ton to order? LISA MITCHELL reports on fashion on the net. Fancy buying Armani online? Will shopping in cyberspace provide you with the same unadulterated pleasure as a possible indulgent day spent traipsing through your selected designer stores? Fancy no more store managers and skinny mirrors telling you how absolutely gorgeous you appear, you can forget afternoons fingering racks to discover that surprise little number due to got down to buy? Never again to stride down Chapel Street, casually dangling those boxy designer shopping bags that tell the globe we've inscrutable taste and elegance? It's inconceivable. Internet enthusiasts would have you believe we'll soon replace pretty much everything with an afternoon of scrolling through screen on the watch's screen of grainy graphics and tapping out orders on the keyboard simply to have the perfect purchase delivered three days later scrunched and crinkled by Australia Post. Protest you could possibly but already the best accessory for today's modern girl is surely an Internet electronic e-mail address. It is a bit like a postal address - lmitch@theage.au - that allows that you send and receive letters to sartorial soulmates around the globe. News groups provide an informal gossip grapevine nevertheless , you may additionally discover a fashion mate that will offer advance tips on what's hot and what's not overseas. Starting out online costs throughout the same as a monthly fashion magazine subscription - around $40 . To link into the net you will require a PC plus a modem. Just what exactly do you get on your subscription? Admission to the internet, that is like looking at the pixelised pages with the world's largest and most dynamic fashion magazine. Internet sites committed to fashion, there are plenty of them, are like never stand still electronic magazines. They supply articles, fashion photography, even videos of runway shows . Some designers have build sites dedicated to their collections with lots of graphics and pricing details, although few appear to enable you to order clothing online which has a bank card. As of this early stage from the game, most tend to list their stockists, many of which can be not nationwide. America's White Dove Fashions offers many methods from junk jewellery to real diamonds - but could you buy "real" diamonds sight unseen? Rainbow Rags in Illinois offers embroidered kiddie clothing for instance applique T-shirts or shorts from $US13. Some might warm on the giraffe coat, faux giraffe, of course, a steal at $US185 from Unreal Coats. Net shoppers ought to apply by e-mail for shipping costs outside America. Slightly more tempting was the Canadian designer, Negative side Creations' Latex clothes Info site offering over 50 second-skin styles in dresses, crop tops and skirts or custom made catsuits from $C30 to $C315. Beauty companies are beginning to make their mark. The likes of Shiseido, the entire body Shop and Aveda offer product information plus some decent graphics. The very best value on the Internet for fashion buffs is window shopping - and Fashion Net is an excellent starting point. There is pointers to American Elle magazine, and also the Lumiere and Cosmopolitan magazine sites. The Elle site, although it is not providing the full-range of articles does preview its winter fashion feature, the Elle Model Gallery, which carries hot shots and gossip on supermodels, a numerology page and a favorite sites page that changes its links to other top fashion spots on the Internet regularly. One problem with the world wide web is that the Web sites are simply as effective as people who maintain them. There are numerous outdated fashion tips doing the rounds in cyberspace. The style Phone book, as an example, was supposed to offer a directory of all of the designers in Australia and round the world but after clicking on Australia and Mel-bourne, people to FYP would realize that Anne Priscilla of Blackburn is our lone designer. Christopher Graf, the designer with Chapel Street's most vivid storefront, perhaps represents the greater industry view now: "I'd like to go surfing on the net but I would not have plenty of time!" Organisers with the upcoming Australian Fashion Week , Australian Fashion Innovators, prefer to searching online by creat-ing an internet site which will list details of events and activities to the public, international press and overseas buyers. But regardless how many fashion sites are created on the web - FishNet, HairNet, FashNet - many believe they'll never replace the shopping expedition. Perhaps the capability to run videos on the net won't eliminate the traditional runway shows, says Malossi. "These are part of the ritual of fashion."