FB #8 - Look books and press kits

When tasked with finding and sharing a digital look book, I instantly thought of one of my favorite bloggers, Kendi Everyday. She started a personal style blog for fun and ended up with enough followers to leave her job in marketing to pursue blogging full time, and has since opened a small boutique in her hometown in Texas. This girl is practically a celebrity in the blogging world. This year she hosted the Gap Styld.by event at their Lincoln Square store in NYC during Fashion Week, and has been participating in their Styld.by campaign where she takes a Gap item or two, styles them up and photographs them to share with the world.

Kendi has a knack for working with what she already has in her closet. In the past, she has put herself on a strict diet of just 30 articles of clothing - tops, bottoms, dresses and shoes - and found creative ways to re-wear these 30 items over a period of 30 days (called "remixing"). Fossil apparently loved the idea, because they brought her in for a their 2011 holiday lookbook and asked her to do something similar with their product. Here are a few photos from the lookbook:

I'm sure you can see some of the items made multiple appearances in these first 12 photos - the leather shorts, the metallic brogues, and the cable knit sweater, to name a few. The look book is no longer available on Fossil's website, but they do have all 30 of the photos up on their Pinterest board! Kendi even blogged a little bit about the experience.

One of the things I love about this partnership is that Fossil brought in a normal person - not a fashion stylist, but a personal style blogger (who happens to be popular) - and used her creative thirty-for-thirty idea for their holiday look book. Their product is a natural fit with Kendi's own style, and she is an easy catalyst for reaching their target market. Realistically, most consumers in Fossil's target market can't afford to buy an entirely fresh closet based on a look book. By using Kendi's remixing trick, consumers can easily pick and choose items which mix well together as well as with items they already have at home. At the same time, Kendi benefits from the partnership with increased visibility to Fossil customers who might not have heard of her prior to the 2011 holiday look book.