Fashion week: Pastels, sheers and YouTube

I don’t care what anybody says. This is the most wonderful time of the year.

Yes, my friends, it is that oh-so-highly anticipated biannual event known as Fashion Week.

For commoners like myself, viewing pictures of each collection online is a tradition that takes up hours each season, and I merrily look forward to it.

However, this year I went beyond spending countless hours on style.com. It was with the excitement like that of a child on Christmas morning that I, too, journeyed to the fashion promised land: Paris.

For the past week, Paris has been abuzz as journalists, buyers and fashion elite descended upon the city. The City of Lights was even more electric than usual.

Models in stage makeup and hair fresh off the runway appeared all over the city.

Crowds gathered outside design houses like Emanuel Ungaro, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive designer or the latest celebrity du jour.

There was definitely an unparalleled excitement about being in Paris during Fashion Week.

But if you can’t make it to the shows in Paris, not to worry; several designers were feeling extra generous this year and have turned to streaming their collections live online for all to see.

In London, Burberry and Sienna Miller’s line, Twenty8Twelve, both offered their fans live streaming of their fashion show presentations. Likewise, New York designers Michael Kors and Isaac Mizrahi presented their collections online as well.

In Milan, the always on-trend Italian label Dolce & Gabbana joined this wave of technical savvy design labels. Many viewers followed the Dolce & Gabbana pre-show installment videos on YouTube. These installments gave fans a sneak peak into the creative process working up to the show debut.

And then there is Paris, the culmination of the fashion week season.

This season, the design houses of Alexander McQueen and Louis Vuitton both presented their collections online. However, unlike the previous designers who participated in the live-streaming trend, in true French style, Vuitton and McQueen each added their own take on the trend.

McQueen, always the eccentric design rebel, produced a video with media company SHOWstudio that was unlike anything the fashion world has seen before.

The background of the runway featured a large video display with a close-up video of the looks being strutted down the runway, interspersed with risque clips of model Raquel Zimmerman writhing on the sand with snakes. The video images gave the futuristic, sea-inspired collection the tone of a twisted sci-fi romance.

As if all the technical innovation wasn’t enough, the close of the show featured Lady Gaga’s newest single, “Bad Romance,” as the models stormed the runway for the final walk.

Vuitton broke the mold by streaming his collection exclusively on Facebook, with limited availability of just 24 hours. Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs is the first luxury brand to broadcast its collection via Facebook, but something tells me he won’t be the last.

With the many collections that are presented each season, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which trends will stick and which will fade.

But this spring/summer 2010 fashion season proved that Web-streaming collections are surely a trend to be watched.