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In the Dries Van Noten exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris is a video that stitches together sequences from 20 years of his runway shows — a “supercut,” in online argot. On a tour of the show not long ago, Mr. Van Noten nodded along as memorable moments flashed: male models pedaling bicycles, women stalking the length of an enormous dinner table. But what stood out most were the ghostly points of light illuminating the audience’s faces in the recent shows.It was, Mr. Van Noten said, their smartphones.The professional photographers on the risers facing the runways now represent only a fraction of those furiously jockeying to document each outfit, accessory and bit of set dressing. Nearly every show attendee, from the front row to the standing section, now arrives with phone in hand andInstagram account primed.So unremarkable is a smartphone camera in every hand, said Danielle Sherman, the creative director of Edun, that when she commissioned a director and a fleet of 20 borrowed iPhone 5s to create a video of her fall 2014 show, hardly an eyebrow was raised. “No one said anything or questioned it, or even noticed it,” she said.Chanel erected a market stocked with some 100,000 faux products for its show in Paris.CreditValerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesThis is fashion in the age of Instagram, a heady era in which digital media is changing the way clothes are presented and even the way they are designed. As shows are calibrated to be socially shared experiences, and fashion itself is rejiggered to catch eyes on a two-dimensional screen, some skeptics wonder what is being lost or sacrificed as fashion becomes grist for the digital mill.Beyond question, the advent of digital media has fundamentally altered fashion, the designer Alexander Wang said: “The way that we shoot it, the way that we showcase it and the way that we make the clothes and design them changed.”Digital media has also changed the way fashion is reported, consumed and shared. Trade papers and websites that once held court as the home of collection coverage have had their turf invaded by individuals. “I see the shows on Instagram now,” said Eva Chen, the editor in chief of Lucky.“In some sense, every single person in the audience is their own media outlet,” said Keith Baptista, the managing partner of Prodject, the creative agency that produces runway shows for clients like Mr. Wang, Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren. “They’re all capturing these moments in this live experience to tell their own stories.” (Consider that Ms. Chen, for instance, currently has more followers on Instagram than her magazine does.)Creating a unique — and, by extension, shareable — experience for jaded showgoers has become part of a designer’s mandate. Shows are designed to wow not only those in attendance, but also all of their followers. (That could be considered a necessary return on investment because, according to Julie Mannion, the president for creative services at the public relations and production firm KCD, a major show can cost $2 million to $8 million, in some cases reaching as much as $10 million, and last fewer than 10 minutes.)Few shows can compete with Chanel’s for over-the-top theatrics. But the company set a higher bar for itself in February, when it erected a Costco-size supermarket stocked with some 100,000 Chanel-customized faux products. (The hams in the meat case, for example, had labels printed Jambon Cambon, a nod to the street on which Chanel maintains offices and a store.)Alexander Wang’s show included looks that appeared two-dimensional.CreditElizabeth Lippman for The New York TimesBefore the show, spectators goggled through the aisles, taking supermarket selfies before the models, pushing shopping carts down the runway, filled their baskets. It was the show that launched 1,000 Instagrams, with “likes” in similar proportion: a photo from Susanna Lau, a.k.a. the blogger Susie Bubble, received more than 2,670, more than double that of many of the other shows she snapped; one by Ms. Chen had 2,330, several hundred more than the several others in close Insta-proximity.The fervor was such that the collection itself was somewhat eclipsed. (Perhaps aware of the attention the mise-en-scène garnered at the expense of its fashion, Chanel declined to speak about its sets.)It is not only the richest labels that think big. Mr. Wang has earned a reputation for social-media-friendly spectacles. In February, his show closed with robotic-looking models rotating on a platform as blasts of heat changed the color of their thermo-sensitive garments, a moment tailor-made for Instagram. “We try to think of the pictures that are going to come out online,” he said, “what the photographer pit takes versus what the audience sees.”La suite sur : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/fashion/fashion-in-the-age-of-instagram.html?_r=0