The Internet has become a virtual hotbed for social networking sites within the past couple of years, but fashion is one area that has remained generally untouched. But those who are in dire need of a cyber style oasis can rest easier via Chictopia.com, a website dedicated to connecting style seekers to trendsetters.
Chictopia launched in April, but it has been gestating since September 2007. Helen Zhu, the site’s CEO, has eight years of web experience but was looking for a change of pace in her career. A light bulb to ignite this change shined over her head when she picked up an issue of Time magazine.
“I was reading an article in where it named ‘You’ as the Person of the Year,” says Zhu. “They did a spread where the Internet had enabled talented individuals to make a name for themselves. I thought I had a talent in fashion, not because of my knowledge or experience, but because I have good taste. I thought that was a talent and wondered where I could showcase that talent.”
Zhu said she could post on MySpace but would only get date propositions. She could also go the YouTube route, but posting fashion videos where funny ball-busting and cutesy animal clips reigned supreme wasn’t really ideal.
Thus, she formed an alliance with Corinne Chan, Richard Ho and Lulu Chang, and Chictopia was born.
Street style blogs like the Sartorialist and Face Hunter may have found success within the cyber fashion world, but it’s still one person’s point of view. More than that, if you think you have style, and want to be featured on those sites, you might be on a long waiting list.
Chictopia gives everyone the opportunity to be their own sartorialist. You can post posh pictures of yourself, seek style advice from “real people,” find out where to buy clothes and gloat about your fabulousness — but be prepared to get critiqued. Readers and users can rate their stylish peers on a scale from “not” to “chic.” Ultimately, it’s a fashion community created by the people for the people.
“I really saw the opportunity to make a webspace more of a democracy,” explains Zhu. “Just like MySpace made the music industry a democracy and how YouTube allowed creative filmmakers a portal to get seen. I saw the opportunity to change the [fashion] industry via web technology.”
With style mavens named Homme, FashionToast and StarrGirl gaining popularity within the chic community, the site already caught the attention of Teen Vogue, saying that it was “the next big thing.”
Zhu and her Chictopia-ites have created a “fashionocracy” that started with a modest readership primarily based in San Francisco, but since its inception, it has spread to New York, the Midwest and Texas. It has even migrated internationally, gaining a following in Australia, France and Singapore.
As for Asian Americans, Zhu says style is embedded in the culture.
“I can’t speak for others, but for me, it’s deep rooted,” says Zhu, who is Chinese American. “My mom always taught me to look presentable when I go out. There’s always an emphasis that the way you look is a reflection of not only yourself but of your parents. When you go out, you need to notice how you look and how it affects others.”
-And . . .
who can say, today, that she wasn’t in “the right” here?
After all, that summer palace will remain long after the “navies” “melt awasy.:
That is, unless some idiot ideologists choose to blast same into eternity.
Meanwhile, as the Fangs and AsianWeek dontinue to make the effort to survive intto the next meillennia of “praise singers” and spinmeisters and doppelgangers, may one idiot observer be allowed the privilege of noting?:
1: The absolute nadir of Bushytailed hubris, to wit, the grandiose gesture of “protecting” immeasurable swatjhes of the Pacific. Whoinell gave him the authority? Much less the porivilege. This guy is one for the books. Of ultimate idiocies, that is.
2: Obama Team’s running up the flag of one Sanjay Gupta as our next “surgeon general. Gee, this is the same guy who had NO clue as to what he was witnessing the day he intoned to the CNN cameras that our field surgeons were making heroic efforts to “save” a ffive-year-old Iraqi boy we had just blown to smithereeens.
3: Leon Panetta as head of the CIA. Whythell not? Surely he is, azt the very least, the equal of the “Brownie” who was doing a great job after Katrina.
’4: The objective journalistic headline on MSNBC today that IOran was “lurking” in the background as the Israelis were massacreing civilians in UN “schools.”
5: The nexus of “charities” with the Madoff “scazndal.” Scandal? Talk about understatements.
6:Lisa Marie Presliey;s “defense” of “Scientology.” Golly, Molly, thyis Ponzi-type ripoff of Freudian methodologies continues to make heqdlines. Geyond poor Tom Cruise AND the parents of that 16-year-old wjho succumbed to a “seizaure.”
Folks, “Scientolopgy” is not onlyi NOT a “religions,” it is also a verifiable Ponzi takeoff of tthe Madoff scams in the realm of psycholog cum profit.
The promulgators springbozaded their get-rich-qauick schemes on the third-rate musings of one L. Ron Hubbard in the guise of “dianetics,” a poor Hollyiwood hack version of psychoanalysis and a hundredfold more expensive.
So, let the gullible, tjhose who are greedy especially, bite on this bait out of the midway come-on.
But the rest of us may well be advised to chedck Wikipedia, with az weather eye out, of course, as to who’s scamming whom.
Damn these fickle fingers, fated or otherwise.
The cart has, once more, opreceded the horse.
And I have trouble recalling which nag I mounted here.
Suffkce tto say tjjat the official Isrealie spin machine has been hoist on its al Jazeera petard today.
No way can they bumble their way out of this, much like our very own Cheney/Bush prototypes.
The dowager empress reference, of course, had to do with her marble summer palace engineerings ivis-a-vis the beginnings of an imperial navy. Which, today, recalls the glories of the He admiral who circumavigated half? the globe BERORE any of those upstazrt Genoans and Lisbonites.
Now, if only Ovzm Ha rhw guts to tell Dianne and others off as to the wisdom of civilian control over pprofessionazl dadaisms of ideology AND perceptions.
How many dead are required as the prerequisite to intervention?
Far too many, apparently.
Hello, Stumbled upon your site seeking fashion tips. Dont you just love the web!! Useful information everywhere, talking of which its Vogues 90th anniversary. Would you agree that they still lead the way?