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Designers Are Changing Their Clothes to Look Better on Instagram

Photo: Monica Schipper/Getty Images

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While speaking on a panel with Eva Chen at Fast Company's Innovation Festival, Proenza Schouler designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough divulged that they take Instagram into consideration when designing clothes. According to Yahoo Style, the two designers said that the social media platform affects how clothes are constructed and which colors are used.

"It's not just about the clothes anymore," Hernandez said. "It's about what you're designing looking good on a screen. You're designing differently. Clothes are a little stiffer as a result...with more color...Black clothes look not as great on a screen. Vogue famously doesn't shoot black clothes because the details get lost. You think along those lines. We love black clothes, but [their Instagram appearance] does cross our mind."

Instagram also serves as a major source of inspiration for a pair of designers who used to go to the New York Public Library in order to do research. "But [hashtags] have really changed the game," they explain. "We've been using [hashtags] as a search engine... we go into Internet K-holes, start searching for one thing, and end up discovering an artist or a trend we didn't even know about. Then we do a screenshot of images we like, print it directly from our computer, and tape it to the wall."

The Instagram inspiration may explain Proenza Schouler's recently released line of reflective pins, which certainly show up great on the platform.