Who Are Your Audience?

In an earlier post I decided to test the waters of the good and bad websites and I compared asos.com to simlyyours.co.uk. Lately I’ve been looking at a new lingerie website, knickerpicker.com. Knickerpicker is a lingerie website that has a very special twist to it. It has an online dressing room which consists of three fairly similar sized women (average sized women who’s actually sizes are not specified in writing) who can try on your selected lingerie items. There are also brands that one can choose from. Once a model and lingerie set has been selected you’re able to view the model wearing it from different angles, back, front and close up. Pretty normal hey? Well here’s the interesting part. Once the suitable model and lingerie has been chosen you can ask her to walk towards you, turn around and walk back as if she were standing right in front of you. It was definitely different but I started to think why do we need the models to be so real? Then I thought who is this ‘we’ I’m thinking of?

Ok, so first of all the most striking aspect of the website (second to the real women modelling) was that there were no actual sizes that you could choose from. I know my actual bra size so why was I presented with three models that could have a close resemblance of what my body looked like? It was then clear from my personal experience at working for two years at the Lingerie section in Harrods that this tactic was in aid of men. Working at Harrods, I would frequently come across male customers looking to buy their girlfriends and wives “the perfect lingerie set” and along with that they were frequently unsure of her actual size or whether it would actually suit her body. So they would describe her figure, skin colour and clothes taste in which I would therefore pick out a suitable lingerie set. They would usually get quite embarrassed talking about these topics as well which was always hilarious. So, it came to my senses that knickerpicker was a lot like visiting an actual store yet perhaps without the embarrassment that men may come to realise they have bought upon themselves. After all, knickerpicker didn’t sell any of the lingerie sets they modelled (you had to visit another website to purchase the goods) so the male customers could, after choosing the desired garments, go and ask their other half what their real size was. I guess in a way that was a very practical solution for them but I couldn’t help but find it offensive or perhaps I was just jealous. I found it offensive because it was simply unbelievable to assume that the female form had only three different forms and two colours to it. I was also particularly jealous that this site was not available for women as well. Perhaps not for underwear in particular but definitely for men’s ordinary clothes. I’m sure women have doubts when buying for their boyfriends/husbands too.

So with this aside my initial shock should be questioned. The not so virtual side of this virtual site, women modelling the garments. In the Dress section of the Asos website one could also view the models walking up and down and performing a kind of cat walk; which was very helpful. Yet the difference with Knickerpicker was that one had the power (a vital word in this context) to tell the models where to move; to walk up or down towards you or turn around at a close or far range, over and over again. So why do we need this? Why do we need them to be real to this extent? Co-founder Dan Gleeson of Knickerpicker said they started the site because they wanted to offer a “more rewarding shopping experience,” instead of a site “that more closely resembles a paper-based catalogue.” I thought a simple cat walk would do the trick but I guess that wasn’t enough. On the right hand side of the chosen model one was able to direct the models to the consumer’s desired position; clicking on turn around would make her turn around, move back or forth would in actual fact make her do this as if she were standing right in front of you. Here, the customer held a power never been so accessible to him before. A level of accessibility that can be seen as pornographic; like S ‘n’ M (Slave and Master). Now why is it at all necessary to add a sort of hidden yet obvious sexual fantasy to a lingerie site that didn’t present highly sexual items? From this freedom granted to the consumer, it seemed obvious that the models were the slaves and the consumer was the master, a master that was seeking sexual gratification from ordering around the slave which in most cases can be held to the male sex. I guess it’s not such an old fact that porn plays a big part in fashion but Knickerpicker was certainly taking it to the next step for us. If one were to argue, like Dan Gleeson, that it was “A more rewarding shopping experience”, perhaps rewarding enough like the privileges of attending a fashion show before buying, then it still didn’t make sense. I’ve certainly never seen a fashion show where one has the power to ask the models to walk up and down as many times as one wishes. The level of power that a customer holds with Knickerpicker is unarguably rewarding yet the obvious exploitation is somewhat worrying.

With all this aside I thought I was done. Not quite; I decided to test Knickerpicker out for myself as I regularly buy my underwear online because lingerie websites are less exhausting then trailing around central London for the right brand and size. At Knickerpicker I was stuck. It seemed that although it offered a reasonable number of brands (18 in total) it didn’t offer many that I would normally trust or know. I think I knew about 3 of the 18 brands yet if forced to I only preferred one; Calvin Klein. This bought me back to my experience at the Lingerie department in Harrods. Among the questions that I would ask my male customers was what brand they would prefer. Looking back it was probably a dim question as if they had little knowledge of their partner’s size then they would most likely not have an interest in all the lingerie brands available at Harrods. Anyway the answer was always along the lines of “I don’t mind. Whatever looks good really”. So there it was, or perhaps it might have been, a crucial reason why the brands at Knickerpicker were not that good in terms of popularity and quality. A man wouldn’t probably question a lingerie brand as much as he would prefer to look at how good the lingerie set looked aesthetically. Why should he? He wont be wearing the, with some brands, the uncomfortable wiring strapped under his breasts or be annoyed that the bra had been stretched in a matter of 3 weeks. It looks good so that what matters man thinks. Who could blame him if at 2008 websites such as Knickerpicker are created and aren’t educating men in women’s vital preferences in lingerie?

It was obvious to me that Knickerpicker’s audience were male and one could look at it in a positive way. An article in Daily News suggested that “It’s a website for a man that has been long overdue”. Its article was even titled “How virtual half-naked women can save your relationship”. One of the top female fashion magazines, Marie Claire, voted it their favorite lingerie website. Although one can not avoid certain positive aspects to the website for men it is still bothering me. I decided to Google it and found interesting results that backed up my feelings towards Knickerpicker. Youtube.com posted a somewhat comical video of knickerpicker.com yet the video posting was related to porn postings. Among the many one was titled ‘My maid! Hot’ and another ‘Student’s Webcam Striptease’. All the related videos, including the knickerpicker one were by male users. Among the comments left for the Knickerpicker video were some very pornographic ones. The Youtube poster of the Knickerpicker video commented on the video saying that “The Knickerpicker lingerie models need someone to take control”. As if these models were now actual people who lived their lives by taking orders from others and if they didn’t they perhaps could not survive.
Additional Google results led me to blog and forum discussions on the nature of Knickerpicker. An open discussion on viralblog.com about Knickerpicker had posted comments by 5 men, and none from women, declaring that it was a simple and fun way to buy underwear. One male comment stated that Knickerpicker was the “Best fashion site I’ve yet to see! Great use of technology in a fun and relevant way. The first in a new wave of fashion sites I would guess”. Perhaps he was right on some level, his personal level, yet every search result that I came across had little commentary from women and more from men. When women voiced their opinions they were very casual, saying that they liked the website, yet not going absolutely crazy about it. All the comments on viralblog.com overall stated that Knickerpicker was a good website for people to by stuff on. Therefore they declared that Knickerpicker, as a lingerie website, was not only for women but for men or even, perhaps from my findings and investigation, only for men.

Maybe I’m exaggerating and maybe I’m just not used to it yet. After all most new things in life are at first unaccepted or difficult to understand. Perhaps this is an extremely acceptable way for men to purchase goods. This may be a way of moving forward with technology and before we know it this would be the normal way to purchase clothes online. Lingerie brand Passionata will shortly be posting their Paris cat walks online later this year and if they find they are successful with this then they might too take on Knickerpicker’s tactics.

Ok discussions aside I decided to do some more testing to see whether the men in my university (University of Arts, London College of Communication) would consider using Knickerpicker to buy their wives and girlfriends lingerie.
It was an anonymous survey on 10 male students aged between 18 to 40. I realise that’s not exactly a large number but some men were really not bothered to test out the Knickerpicker and Asos websites in order to answer the questions. Anyway the results, as you will see, are quite interesting.


Here are the questions and results:

1) Would you use an online lingerie website?
Results: 5 out of 10 answered yes.

2) If you were using an online lingerie website would you look for brands when buying or would the overall look matter more?
Results: 9 out of ten chose ‘Overall matters more’.

3) How much would you rate asos.com overall out of 10? (10 being excellent and 1 being terrible).
Results: 8 out of 10 rated asos.com under 6.

4) How much would you rate the online dressing room on Knickerpicker.com overall out of 10? (10 being excellent and 1 being terrible).
Results: 7 out of ten rated the Dressing Room on Knickerpicker.com over 8.

Sources:

Daily News article on Knickerpicker:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2008/02/05/2008-02-05_how_virtual_halfnaked_women_can_save_you.html


Knickerpicker Video Posting on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLjiNjcIK2c


A discussion on viralblog.com about Knickerpicker:
http://www.viralblog.com/2008/01/05/knickerpicker-the-viral-online-dressing-room/

The official Passionata website:
http://show.passionata.com/en/

The Dressing Room on the Knickerpicker website:
http://www.knickerpicker.com/dressing-room.asp