Forget spending hours looking for looks. Stylists, we introduce you to TagWalk. You’re welcome.
Sometimes a good idea is so good it is hard to believe that no one had thought of it before. That was how Alexandra Van Houtte felt when she came up with the concept for her recently launched website Tag-Walk.com. It is apparently the first runway image key word search engine in existence.
In a nutshell the former stylists assistant and current digital entrepreneur created a site that, in just a few simple clicks, makes it possible for stylists to whittle down their sartorial selections for fashion shoots or mood boards from the thousands of catwalk images taken every season. It is also the perfect tool for fashion journalists who are obliged to cull together images for those never ending “top trend” texts. The site could even eventually end up being a great place for your average fashionista to go to build up her seasonal sartorial wish list to the key pieces she will end up investing in.
“Every time I was asked to, say, find a red dress, it would take me hours to just go on Style.com and find at least ten good enough red dresses. And I would always go the same big brands and I would never really divert to anything new because the process was so time consuming already, with just the big brands,” said Van Houtte.
« Every time I was asked to, say, find a red dress, it would take me hours to just go on Style.com and find at least ten good enough red dresses. »
Think of the site like a Google for fashion. Type in one, or a few, of the over 500 key words that Alexandra has painstakingly entered into the site over the past few months and a selection of looks will line up four deep across the page from a database of over 8,000 images. In a show of solidarity pretty much all the leading brands – with the exception of Vetements and Y/Project – that show their collections on a runway in the top four fashion capitals of the world gave Van Houtte permission to use their catwalk images on her site.
Online less than a month the site already counts big name stylists like Patti Wilson as fans. “I use it all the time, it’s so practical,” said Wilson about the site.
Tagwalk introduces its readers to a new trend taken from the runway every week.
The crisp and clean design of the site makes it incredibly user friendly and it functions in a very organic way. It is currently possible to troll the site in both French and English and Van Houtte, who speaks Mandarin, hopes to have a Chinese version of the site up soon. And she is also currently working on cataloging all of the accessories of the season as well and hopes to have those options up on the site in the near future.
“Its kind of like the best of Instagram with its hashtags, the best of Style.com with the shows, and the best of Pintrest because you can make mood boards on the site,” said Van Houtte. Although this is a rather audacious claim, it’s a pretty apt description of this site that, without a doubt, will soon becomes a new secret weapon for stylists.
