Click to buy: fashion blog is a street version of shopping mags

Most street-style fashion blogs serve their readers primarily as sources of inspiration, but a new London-based blog has added an e-commerce twist to let readers click on looks they like and purchase them on the spot. Stitsh, which launched earlier this year, offers up galleries of photos of real men and women on the London streets wearing a wide variety of looks and styles. In addition to having subjects sign photo releases, Stitsh’s photographers also find out about the clothes they are wearing and hunt them down in retail stores, forging e-commerce partnerships wherever possible. Users of the site, which is ultimately much like a blog version of shopping magazine Lucky, can then just click on items they’re interested in and be taken to stores where those items–or very similar versions–can be purchased. Photos are arranged by gender, and items are also tagged for easy searchability. “The way I shop is I look at what people are wearing,” Stitsh founder Dom Fendius told Women’s Wear Daily. “When the street-style blogs came online, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could buy the clothing worn in those photos?” Stitsh is partially funded by ads, but it also works on a commission model, WWD reports. Specifically, each Stitsh reader who clicks through to the site of an online retailer such as Topshop, Miss Selfridge, House of Fraser or French Connection and buys something there earns Stitsh a commission of up to 12 percent. Some stores will even pay Stitsh the commission for shoppers who return to buy something as much as 30 days later, according to WWD. Stitsh currently covers just the streets of London, but Manchester, Stockholm and New York are reportedly in the works. One to partner with or emulate in other parts of the world…? Spotted by: Susanna Haynie