Dismissed early on as the virtual equivalent of a too-much-information mini-convo, Twitter is now the go-to platform for real time fashion commentary. Formerly the sole province of young bloggers and tech-savvy VIPs, the microblogging service has gained increasing traction with critics, models and designers alike. Grace Coddington, André Leon Talley and Cathy Horyn are all recent, once-reluctant converts, having joined the ranks of everyone from Stefano Gabbana and Stella McCartney to A-list mannequins like Abbey Lee Kershaw, Karlie Kloss and Coco Rocha.

Retailers too, are finding Twitter indispensable. Net-a-Porter, ShopBop and Sephora all use the service, as do brands such as Gucci, Topshop and American Apparel. Broadening one’s virtual base—consumer or otherwise—has arguably been the main catalyst in jumping on the bandwagon, giving followers a feeling of insider exclusivity. Similarly, many of the most widely read fashion news outlets and blogs like The Moment, Style, and WWD use Twitter for runway scoops as well as for behind the scenes backstage and party videos and pics.

Both Prada and Calvin Klein used video to showcase their label’s respective offerings, the former via a quirky, accessories-heavy, Steven Meisel-helmed advert that quickly went viral. While stills from the video could seamlessly translate to the pages of spring fashion mags, Calvin Klein’s adults-only underwear commercial necessitated sound. Though the expletives were bleeped, viewers knew exactly what Kellan Lutz et al. were getting at with their attention-getting-albeit-questionable “Do You Wanna?” queries.

Another all-access must-have this season is live streaming video via hosts like ShowStudio, Facebook or, aptly, LiveStream.com. Rodarte, Alexander Wang, Marc Jacobs and Proenza Schouler were among the biggest New York names to invite anyone with an internet connection to get up close and personal with their fall collections. Across the pond, meanwhile, labels such as Louise Gray, Hussein Chalayan and Basso & Brooke did the same thing for London Fashion Week. Granted, House of Holland took the tech conceit one step further by teaming up with BlackBerry to introduce an app enabling users to buy pieces directly from the runway.

Burberry followed suit, allowing consumers to pre-order a selection of looks instantaneously via its website for 72 hours only. The bigger story out of LFW (and perhaps of the entire season), however, was the company’s decision to go 3-D. Select editors, critics and buyers in five cities worldwide donned a pair of very special glasses to view the show, while an estimated 100 million viewers caught the global simulcast via Vogue and CNN’s sites. Despite a number of technical difficulties with the live feed, most users responded positively to the collection, either via the Burberry stream itself or Twitter, natch.

Both the limited-time pre-sale of merchandise and 3-D presentation were widely heralded as master strokes. Still, the latter might have ultimately been more of a canny PR coup than trailblazing initiative, given many editors’ preference for still being present in-person. Any label seeking to replicate that success next season runs the risk of looking derivative. Not so with live streaming, on the other hand, which we predict will be the industry norm very soon, enabling the jaded and jetlagged to catch just about any label from the comfort of home or a hotel. Video adverts (particularly those featuring big name photogs and Hollywood celebs) will also likely continue to generate headlines, albeit briefly.

Speaking of brevity, Twitter is here to stay—at least until another, equal parts addictive-and-informative system supplants it.

What’s hot right now?

I just finished working on my upcoming Fall collection and I must say it is smokin’ hot. I’m not so much of a party freak and I have very, very long working days—when I have some time off, the hottest thing for me is a bottle of Bordeaux, scented candles and a warm bath.

What are your favorite trends at the moment?

I’ve always thought “trends” were an annoying concept. The best trends are the ones that individuals create for themselves. The trendiest trend is to be unique.

What kind of shoes should women get for the s/s ‘10 season?

Mine. Because they’re the sexiest.

The modern day fashion professional identity is a gray area involving many roles. Having a single title has become a departed concept—today, a fashion designer is also a product developer, charity entrepreneur, editor and consultant, while a hairstylist moonlights as a TV commentator, author and art enthusiast. To better understand the trend and the motivation behind these multi-titled professionals, we interviewed a network of multi-taskers to weigh in on their seemingly insatiable professional appetites. First in our series is Ninette Murk, a Belgian-based expert, who works on a number of important fashion-related social causes.

JC Report: Tell us about all the projects you’re currently working on and the titles you attach to them.

Ninette Murk: I’m the founder and director of Designers Against AIDS, creative director for Be Carbon Neutral (BCN), director of International HIV/AIDS Awareness Education Center Antwerp IHAEC, the PR director for Stimuli Magazine, plus a consultant for various brands/designers and a relentless networker.

JCR: Is each role independent of the other, or do they overlap at points?

NM: They overlap as they all have a lot to do with my personality, which is communicative, creative, visionary, stubborn, idealistic, passionate, enthusiastic and naïve.

JCR: Do you think modern day culture promotes seeking success in multiple fields?

NM: For me, a low boredom threshold does more than anything else. Plus, I get enthusiastic very fast about almost everything and everyone.

JCR: Do you work in your current capacity to stay master of your own destiny or do you work out of necessity?

NM: I work because I can and I want to. I feel blessed to be able to work in the way I do right now and to get so much recognition for it. Also, the fact that our work helps to make the world a better place is very important to me. I never had that feeling when I was still a fashion journalist, although promoting young designers and seeing them succeed gave me a lot of satisfaction too.

JCR: What’s the role of collaboration in your current work profile?

NM: It’s immense. Without collaboration, the resulting synergies and the power of the internet, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to where we are now.

JCR: In the future do you envision experimenting with even more roles?

NM: I never plan much, things happen for a reason and if I like to do something, I’ll just do it.

JCR: Define your professional bliss?

NM: If HIV/AIDS would be eradicated I’d be pretty happy—and without my most important job. When I look at the rising rate of HIV infections in the industrialized world, this regretfully isn’t going to happen any day soon though.

This interview was conducted by Jason Campbell.

After several seasons of magazine beauty editors championing the strong, overgrown brow look, the pendulum has swung towards eyebrows that look nearly invisible. The initial impression is stark and alienating, but eliminating a heavy brow is refreshingly liberating for a neo-modern, bare-faced look.

We first caught wind of this trend last year on the runway for Balenciaga’s spring/summer ‘09 collection when Natalia Vodianova opened the show with her signature full eyebrows faded into her glowing, pale complexion, but the look reemerged on runways from Milan to Paris at the recent autumn/winter ‘09 shows.

At Miu Miu, make-up artists were seen applying cream bleach on top of the models’ brows before sweeping warm, sunset-in-the-Sahara hues all over the lids and extending into the eyebrow area, which achieved a futuristic ’70s appeal. Meanwhile, at Givenchy, brows looked baby-fine and barely there, accented only by a soft touch of sheer gunpowder eye shadow on the lids. Alexander McQueen created drama through erasing brows altogether with white creamy foundation in order to showcase the ghastly, overblown red lips drawn on his models. Giorgio Armani, on the other hand, took a reliably elegant approach by pairing naturally bare, but brushed, brows with demure, smoky eyes and defined lips.

Though the trend may sound a tad dramatic for non-professionals, the minimal look actually translates from the runway to reality. Scarlett Johansson may have once joked that she looked like “a peeled egg” in Girl with a Pearl Earring, but model Lara Stone strikes a better balance with her own bare brow look—ranging from innocent to severe depending on the rest of her makeup or wardrobe.

A reality-friendly technique to keep on-trend without sacrificing your brow is to follow the advice in Kevin Aucoin’s beauty bible Making Faces: bleach your eyebrows one shade lighter than its natural color, or fill in-between the hairs with a medium to light ash eyebrow pencil. After all, not every face can withstand bold, unkempt brows—even Brooke Shields’ famously thick eyebrows have become more streamlined over the years.

—Jessica Dang

The NAIF is the first fashion trade organization to deploy social media directly to consumers themselves. In February, it launched a unique “Made in Italy” campaign by partnering with groundbreaking social advertising site Zooppa and asking consumers to upload videos about what they think of Italian footwear in competition for cash prizes. Within three weeks, the site saw more than 100 submissions and 100,000 downloads. The winning video was by Alessandro Meucci, an aspiring filmmaker living in Tokyo with his Australian girlfriend who loves her Bruno Magli stilettos.

Will CFDA be next, soliciting feedback directly from the shoppers who consume the actual brands? There’s no telling where this intriguing new trend will show up next, but it’s a compelling model for fashion organizations to highlight their member brands and raise consumer awareness in a changing, and often slippery retail landscape.

—Genevieve Bishop

Beyoncé: “Diva”

Rihanna: “Disturbia”