From catwalk to laptop, fashion houses embrace web

"(The Web) is very important by the sheer fact people are spending more time online, on Facebook, Twittering," Emanuel Ungaro Chief Executive Mounir Moufarrige said.

He said online and glossy magazine ads were complementary.

One challenge fashion houses will face will be how to deal with the lag between photos of new collections going online as they are presented and them hitting the stores six months later, when they could seem dated.

"If you're an artist and the only one who can come up with those color combinations and those prints ... people will wait as long as they have to," said Scott Schuman, a fashion industry veteran-turned-blogger through his The Sartorialist site.

"If you're just an everyday designer and you've just come out with some thing and somebody else can do it better, cheaper or get it to (consumers) faster, they'll buy that."

With new Web ventures like Dolce & Gabbana's magazine Swide and Burberry's social network site www.artofthetrench.com, many maisons are constantly thinking of new online tools to woo fans.

"It's marketing as usual, this just happens to be the new thing," Schuman said.