The great, the good and the impeccably well dressed of the fashion word descend on the capital for London Fashion Week.
Over the course of a week journalists, designers, models and celebrities will be hot-footing it around the capital to watch the shows, requiring an impeccably organised diary, eating on the go and furious typing.
A smartphone can be an incredibly useful tool, before fashion week it’s worth a raid on the app store, where there are numerous application to help survive the week.
Here’s our pick of Fashion Week Survival apps:
W Front Row
iPhone, Free
An offshoot of W Magazine this app is a one-stop guide to not just for London Fashion Week, but also New York, Milan and Paris.
Insider Guide provides information on shopping, eating and drinking and beauty within each city. There’s a section on culture, should visiting fashionista’s want to visit the Tate Modern and ‘Insiders’ provides recommendations by designers like Henry Holland.
Listing the times and locations of all fashion shows for the week, the Calendar is the most useful element. Click on an event to view the Google Maps location and get directions from your current location.
Elsewhere Buzz Feed compiles fashion week apps related to W Magazine
Despite being beautifully designed, pop-up adverts can be irritating, but for the calendar alone, this is worth a download.
Style.com
iPhone, Free
This app is a collection of photographs from all the fashion shows. Search alphabetically and click on a designer to view a photo slide show of the show, along with a review by Tim Blanks.
There’s an exhaustive list of designers along with ready to wear, couture and menswear shows from London, New York, Paris and Milan going right back to 2000.
Stunning photographs can be uploaded to Facebook or Twitter or sent as a link via email.
Elsewhere there’s a collection of fashion week party photos and some excellent highlight videos for key designers.
Ultimately the app is probably more useful after the event as a reference of what each designer showcased at London Fashion Week 2011.
Week Calendar
£1.49, iPhone
Flitting between shows at different times and locations requires impeccable organisation.
Week Calendar is a very useful iPhone calendar app that lets you view events in a weekly calendar view. Organise events by dragging and dropping, link contacts to events and (especially useful for fashion weeks multiple locations) use colour coding to differentiate between locations.
Week Calendar also works with other calendars, including: Outlook, Exchange and Google Calendar, so you can sync it with your desktop calendar.
A very intuitive and slick calendar app.
Daily Burn
Free, iPhone, Android
Eat on the go often mean unhealthy chocolate or crisps. Daily Burn lets you keep a track of the number of calories you are consuming. Either manually select an item from the database of 350,000 items or – and this is the clever part – scan the barcode, using your smartphone camera. We tried scanning a selection of food product around the office and it correctly guessed four of our five products. As the day progresses and you eat more, keep updateing the app and it will chart your progress in calories towards your goal.
Beyond fashion week You can customise diet plans and build training plans, including: Running, Swimming, and Cycling, along with custom workout routines.
The same app developer created Meal Snap (iOS 69p), instead of looking up the calorie content of each meal, use this app to take a photograph of your food and it estimates the number of calories. We’d recommend using it as a guide only though.
Urbanspoon
Free, iPhone, Android
What do you do when the fashion shows finish and copy had been filed? Either sleep or you step out for something to eat
This useful lets you set the location, type of cuisine and price parameters and use a fruit-machine selector to ‘Shake’ a restaurant suggestion.
Each eatery includes photo, map (via browser or Google Maps) and phone number, although you can’t book directly through the app. Most useful are the reviews and pictures by other users, which you can write yourself to rate a good meal.
Addison Lee
Free, Android, iPhone
Getting between fashion week venues will require either dependence on taxis or public transport – probably the later for most models and editors.
Addison Lee is Europe’s largest mini cab service and this excellent app lets you make bookings within seconds.
Choose between Cash and Card bookings, then enter the Pickup and Destination addresses, with the time required and number of passengers. Once booked you’ll receive a confirmation and job number, with registration by text.
The app is very simple to use (although the Android version is beta and we had a couple of crashes), but for it’s speed and efficiency this app is excellent and business accounts users can use it too.
London Transport
£1.99, iPhone
If you’re an independent blogger rather than an fashion editor, it’s likely you will be using the tube or bus instead. If so London Transport is an essential and very comprehensive app, with a journey planner, live departure board and bus timetables.
If you’re planning on walking the app includes directions, or if want to treat yourself to a cab, there’s a mini cab booking service. The use of live traffic cameras means you can avoid traffic jams to be sure you’re not beyond fashionably late for a show.
ExpenseMagic
Free
During fashion week you’ll be spending money on taxi’s, lunch and lots of coffee, resulting in a purse full of receipts.
With Expense Magic you don’t have to even keep receipts.
Instead take a picture of each receipt, which is sent to the cloud, choose to enter details yourself – such as ‘Coffee at Nero Thursday’ or if you don’t have time. ExpenseMagic’s book keepers can capture all the information for you. Once completed you receive a report as a CSV or ZIP, which can go to your accounts department. Of course. we’d suggest checking they accept receipts in this format first. The app is free, but it costs a token to submit an expense, buy these within the app for £2.99 for 20, although you get five free to start you off, but for the amount of time you save, it’s worth it.
NET-A-PORTER The Window Shop
Free, iPhone
It’s not as London Fashion-week centric as W Front Row, but this app deserves a mention for its use of technology. Online fashion retailer Net-A-Porter and augmented reality specialist Aurasma have partnered to create an virtual shop.
Part of Vogue’s Fashion Night Out, the app works in conjunction with a pop-up store at 19 Mount Street. shoppers who download the app, visit the store and hold up their phone in front to view and buy clothes in a virtual shop.
It’s a really interesting idea and in the future users will be able to access information every time they see the Window Shop icon at future fashion events and in NET-A-PORTER magazine.
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