Be gone, middleman!

MUUSE takes talented top designers recently graduated from the world’s best educations and brings their vision right to the masses. Anna Wintour may still wield a bronze sword at underlings in a shiny Manhattan office, but MUUSE works to undercut such out-of-touch domineering.

For those of us who spend the vast majority of our time mired in digi-tech, this is a duh! moment: of course peer-review can be leveraged by not only cotton-tee companies like Threadless, but the upper echelon of the fashion world. I mean, this is not exactly the crowdsourcing model embraced by Threadless, but it’s essentially allowing the people to be in the driver’s seat of what’s hot or not. The public can influence which pieces become produced in small batches and even put forth ideas for collections.

As a self-styled expert in creative business start ups, I know the biggest risk for budding designers comes from the phenomenon that ‘nobody knows’ how the market will, or will not, embrace your good until it’s already on the market. At this point, your costs are sunk and you just pray to whatever god is yours that you survive the response.

The idea is simple: young designers eschew the financial burden of producing an entire line before being able to access the proverbial market temperature. Via MUUSE’s hand crafted pay-per-sale model, designers are granted a digital platform to present their collections and accept orders from clients dotting the globe, and receive feedback and input along the process, not after all is said and done. Members of the site are invited to participate: designers offer an exclusive peak into their creative processes, and the public evaluates which pieces ought to be set in motion.

In 6-10 weeks anyone can step out for a night on the town donning a killer new piece of limited edition haute couture (I’m a particular fan of the Aphrodite Dress from Thidarat Kaha’s Onyx collection, but don’t get paid quite well enough to make it mine). Just like me? One Christmas gift shy of the poorhouse? You can still get involved: MUUSE will commence a public campaign #bemymuuse for the title of MUUSE’s Most Promising Designer by VOGUE Talents next month. For now, designers are submitting their collections to the company, but all will be reckoned via public vote in mid-December.

By the way, they’re launching their 50th designer today. No small feat.