LYST: A social ‘HAUTE’ shopping experience and more

The fashion industry was hard enough to keep up with when there were only a few fashion magazines, when you were first introduced to one or two blogs and when fashion designers that actually mattered were identified with only a few alphabetical letters DG, GG and LV.Fast-forward to 2011 and the blogs are endless, the magazines –online and those still surviving in print- countless and new-fangled fashion designers, stylists, photographers even on-line retailers seem to pop-up one after the other with such swiftness and energy they could bring the Duracell bunny to shame.The way people search for fashion has changed, the approach they choose to interact with fashion is shifting on a daily basis and the interest for fashion is rising rapidly even as we speak. The real question is how do you keep up and how do you discover everything that is out there?Enter LYST!LYST is an on-line social curation site that focuses exclusively on fashion. You didn’t get it? Well, neither did we at the beginning but it is actually a lot simpler that it sounds. LYST that was founded in 2010 by Chris Morton, Devin Hunt, and Sebastjan Trepca, features the top retailers, stores, boutiques, designers & stylists hosting them under one digital ‘roof’ scandalising you with their latest offerings, up-to-the-minute trends, the best products & their most up-to-date work keeping you informed with what is happening within the fashion world whilst at the same time giving you the option to shop each and every item that has been ‘lysted’.You can curate your own ‘lysts’, mode collections and also follow anyone from established fashion houses Balmain, Burberry and Yves Saint Laurent, to novel and innovative designers like Prabal Gurung, ACNE, Olsen’s The Row and Philip Lim. And if that wasn’t enough, LYST immediately filters online products and offers from your favourite retailers and boutiques all around the world straight to your inbox; all you have to do is create your LYST profile!When becoming a bonafide ‘Lyster’ you can interact with other Lysters, comment on their collections, re-lyst their picks or you can browse through infinite retailers and designers and put together ‘lysts’ that will last you a lifetime. It’s like an ‘haute’ window shopping experience but instead you get to keep everything that you love until you are ready for a purchase, get notified when everything goes on sale and LYST has introduced widgets and verified accounts so you know that the celebrity, editor or fashion house you are following are actually the real deal. "These new features are part of Lysts mission to improve the way people share and discover fashion online," Lyst CEO Chris Morton told 7thMan. "Were excited by the early impact they are already having on sales and growth."So are social curation sites the way for discovering fashion online? Anyone may use it for different reasons; shopping, lysting, exchanging ideas and thoughts, exploring new trends and styles and even though I was apprehensive all I had to do to be convinced was to create a profile! I am now an officially hooked Lyster!Follow me at www.LYST.com/andreasmenelaou By Andreas Menelaou Features Assistant