The Art of the Trench

Adam in NYC. LOVE the shorts

Lula and Ruby in Glasgow - they make me want twins. Picture taken by Brian Sweeney

Caterina in London

Garance Dore in New York City taken by BF Scott

Francisco in Venice. Such a great shot by The Sartorialist

Jeremy from Berlin. Although I swear he must be Jude Law's twin brother. Such a beautiful man!

I recently went for an interview where I was told that if I didn’t own a Facebook, Twitter or Youtube account, or blogged religiously that I was not a relevant member of the society as it was. Harsh. Very harsh, but true.

The world is getting smaller; people no longer have to send smoke signals or even letters and emails, and instead tweet to get their messages across. So you can see why if you haven’t got at least one, or preferably all of these, you’re considered to be living under a rock. Companies who wish to stay relevant, luxury brands included, have to tap into these resources to remain at the forefront of their customer’s minds.

In that respect, Burberry is doing pretty well. They tick all the boxes: Facebook fan page with over 700,000 fans, check; Youtube account with video coverage and behind the scenes footage from LFW, check; a Twitter page with over 5,000 followers, check; and now a Burberry blog, check check. The Art of the Trench, essentially a communal blog, is a new social networking medium launched by Burberry on the 9^th of November. It has over 100 pictures of people all around the world from Berlin to Toronto sporting the famous Burberry trench.

Quite a few of the pictures were taken by Scott Shuman of The Sartorialist, although member of the public can now send in pictures of themselves and the best of the best will be uploaded onto the site. ‘Crowdsourcing’ it’s called – a new term I learned today. Clever, Mr. Bailey. That way people sending their pictures to the ‘blog’ as well as signing in to see if they’ve been picked, as well as their friends logging in via Facebook Connect to give it a thumbs up or make comments significantly increases the traffic to their website.

All in all a very smart move by Burberry, and as far as I know (and I am the Oracle. Ha, I kid), no other luxury brand has a social networking site of this proportion. The Art of the Trench is further enhanced by the fact that the site is very well designed, easy to navigate and you can filter the images according to parameters such as the weather for example.

The site also features some of the greatest ad campaigns over the years as well as a history of the trench from 1910s using photographs and film.