Make That 15 Seconds of Fame

A screen from the Web site Viddy.

Cecil Beaton produced a torrent of work, not unlike Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami, who collaborated with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. In a new book, “Cecil Beaton: The New York Years” (Skira/Rizzoli), Donald Albrecht suggests that Beaton’s methods of working in a variety of media, his blurring of the lines between art and commerce, and his promotional skills made him “remarkably prescient.”

Certainly Beaton was able to move from one medium to another: fashion photography, portraiture, illustration, costume and set design. I’m sure many designers today wish they could be liberated from their studio bunkers; the demands of work keep them pinned down like enemy fire. A few have time to express themselves in other media (and I don’t mean HSN), but most have to do their dreaming with pins and fabric and mood boards. It’s not so bad.

Beaton brought a depth of understanding to fashion that owed much, I think, to his layered approach. A self-portrait in an overly decorative frame suggests the wallpapered surfaces of Murakami. Today, with rare exceptions, fashion seems to lack that degree of depth, depth with a calculated eye, and one explanation is that we are simply too absorbed in consuming images.

Viddy, a social video app for the iPhone and iPad, may intensify that experience during Fashion Week. Viddy allows you to shoot and instantly share a 15-second video on the Viddy network, or on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. As Paul Boutin pointed out recently on Gadgetwise, many people shoot videos on their smartphones but don’t bother to share them because too many steps are involved. But Viddy finesses that problem by being instant and by having downloadable video effects and background music to give an art-directed look to your clip.

The Viddy app available through iTunes.

Rock bands were among the first to use Viddy, which went live in April and has an estimated 750,000 users. The company has already created customized production packs for some bands, and, according to J. J. Aguhob, a co-founder, has been talking with “CSI,” the CBS drama series, about doing the same, giving fans another way to engage. The potential for the fashion industry is obvious. Burberry, for example, could create a pack around its signature plaid or a runway song that Viddy users could then download as a glam ambiance for their clips. JewelMint, a Los Angeles-based jewelry company, uses Viddy clips to show how to incorporate new pieces.

“It’s about having digestible content,” Mr. Aguhob said. Well, anyone who loves the brevity of Twitter will understand that. There are plenty of times when I’ve wanted to record a visit to a studio or capture the effect of embroidery, and wanted to do that without a time-consuming hassle. You can search Viddy users on Twitter and Facebook, but for now the results are random: you get a lot of teenagers and cute kittens. Mr. Aguhob said the company is working on its search tool, and expects to offer an app for Android phones soon, with others by year’s end.

Meanwhile, Viddy is creating a page in time for Fashion Week (fashion.viddy.com) so that will help fashionistas stay in the moment and filter out the cats.