Starting on September 13, Conde Nast's Internet arm, Conde Net, is launching an improved Web site for its Vogue magazine, featuring shots of top designers' new lines of clothing and commentary about the collections.

Designers including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Versace and Donna Karan have agreed to let Conde Net into their tents with cameras and recorders to put their collections on Vogue.com.

While there are numerous beauty companies selling fragrances and supplies, the Internet hasn't been a conduit for couture so far. Part of the reason is designers didn't feel their collections were portrayed as fabulously as they are in glossy magazines. Additionally, the top designers didn't want photographs of their collections in the public domain where they could easily be knocked off.

Advertising space

To give the site a boost inthe beginning, Conde Nast, a unit of Advance Publications, basically is giving away Web advertising space to its biggest designers who now are advertising in Vogue magazine. Conde Net director Sarah Chubb said these designers will receive advertising space on the Web provided they also donate $5,000 to a specific AIDS-related charity set up by the fashion industry. The advertising package for the designers will be for six weeks, through the end of the showing of their spring collections in Paris, Chubb said.

Chubb said the site has signed up several beauty-supply advertisers, including the European store Sephora.

Conde Net Web sites, such as Epicurious, which focuses on food, Swoon, which offers insight on personal relationships, and PHYS, a fitness site, have some major advertisers, including General Motors, AT&T and Procter & Gamble.Fashion Web sites have had some success so far, especially if they show women wearing very little. Limited Inc.'s Victoria's Secret aired a television commercial in the USwith barely dressed models that drew 1.5 million viewers to its Web site for a live cybercast of its fashion show after the lingerie retailer launched an advertising blitz to promote the show.

A crush of people tried to view the show on the site, causing bottlenecks and other technical trip-ups, leaving thousands sidelined. Chubb said Conde Net has secured more than enough "broadband" to cover viewers coming to the Vogue site.

The improved site, which has Vogue editor Anna Wintour's well-manicured thumb's-up, is ambitious compared with other fashion sites. For example, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which is coordinating with Vogue its own Web site, will feature runway shots of 60-plus designers who will be showing their collections this week in New York, but that site will have only about 100 pages total.

Vogue.com will put up about 1,000 pages a day of new material, said Joan Feeney, Conde Net editorial director.

First collection

Feeney said the site won't duplicate themagazine's material. She said there will be shots of fashions and photographs taken backstage of celebrities within hours of the event. Additionally, there will be photographs showing who is sitting where at the fashion shows. The first collection being featured on the site will be Versace's Versus line.

Feeney said, "We're trying to be true to Vogue and to the Web. It's not about putting up previously published material. It is creating material in the Vogue framework that works well on the Web."

-- The Asian Wall Street Journal