[Quest:] Fashionistas the world over are training their sights on London this week. Hot on the heels of New York, the five-day fashion week is expected to bring in orders worth more than $155 million. Sir Philip Green's top shop teamed up with Google to showcase its latest collection at the Tate Modern, and Becky Anderson spoke to the British fashion mogul about the tie-up.
[Philip Green, Owner, Arcadia Group:] The young generation, you're going to rest on this, all of them, five of them, six of them, having dinner, and whether they're talking to each other I'm not sure, but everybody's got at least two gadgets in their hands. It's that's where the world's going. So, as a choice, we've got to be involved with the best technology companies, Google.
[Unidenetified Male:] The friendship with Topshop came about in the fall, where Justin Cooke, the imaginative, creative behind Topshop, came in just for a general chat. And the ideas became so concrete and so fast that literally the day after we decided to target the Tate Modern Topshop show as kind of the coming out party for Google Plus and Topshop, showing off what brands can do with the tool set.
[Becky Anderson, Cnn International Correspondent:] Listen, I still want to get behind the scenes. I want to get behind the
[Unidentified Male:] Let's do it.
[Anderson:] scenes for real, so come on, let's do this.
[Justin Cooke, Chief Marketing Officer, Topshop:] I was very fortunate to work on the first-ever kind of live Twitter images from backstage. We've really taken it on a level, so we're going to have live video, you're going to see all the girls are going to be filmed and projected back in the space for the finale. But this is really this is advanced. This is like a film set, so the girls are everything's being captured. And it means you're capturing it here, but you can share it with people wherever on different ways, on topshop.com, when the products arrives in stores six months later, you have all this content, all this excitement, this is what it's about.
[Anderson:] There's an allure about fashion shows that, quite frankly, you'll lose if you let everybody in behind the scenes. Are you worried about that at all?
[Cooke:] No, I think I think
[Anderson:] The magic, that's what we're talking about.
[Cooke:] Yes. But I think, for me, it's I'm looking from the other way. I want to take the magic outwards and share it with everyone, because you don't lose what's in the room. The people still have that. But why would millions of people not get to experience that? Because not everyone can be at the show. I think that's really what we're talking about. I think great brands make an emotional connection with the customer, and there's so much emotion in the room, when the lights go down, when the music changes, and we want to share that with everyone.
[Anderson:] How does this tool set work, and what sort of investment goes into providing the sort of technology overall that will work today?
[Unidentified Male:] The tool set is astoundingly simple. We started to sort of trickle out really this river of content, where you've got the models, Cara and Jourdan, and Topshop themselves sort of just posting photos and videos through the Google Plus stream. You will have a Hangout app that shows people every single look that was shown on the catwalk and have them tell Topshop's buyers, hey, this is what I recommend to you as an everyday consumer what you should put in the store for your fall collection.
[Anderson:] Europe's a tough market at the moment. We all know that. How tough?
[Green:] I wouldn't want to be the chancellor, let's put it that way. It's not simple. When you've had ten years of spend, it's tough. There's no easy solution. So, I think you've got to keep it tight. We've got to be smarter, cleverer. If you talk to any retailer around the globe, everybody would like to have less stores. So, everybody knows in the mix sort of the marketplace itself is changing.
[Anderson:] So, you tweet, you do Facebook, right?
[Green:] Well, they're teaching me.
[Anderson:] Can we just see your phone?
[Green:] No.
[Anderson:] Come on, bring the phone there you go!
[Green:] I wouldn't know how to turn it on.
[Anderson:] That's not his.
[Green:] That's mine, you see? Old-fashioned.
[Anderson:] You run.
[Green:] But I promise you this. I bet these answer more than anybody else in my company. I was on the phone at 5:00 AM to LA this morning to find out how the store numbers were.
[Quest:] Now this is absolutely fascinating I not going to tell you which CEOs, but more and more CEOs tell me that they are using those old Nokia and Sony phones, those old type, because they say they can use them quickly, they can just simply send texts, and they're not as available for hacking and things like that. So there you are. Philip Green, Sir Philip Green is not alone. Would you go back to an old phone? Are the old phones better than the new ones? @RichardQuest. The old Nokia brick. Coming up next, a victim of changing times. The magazine maker RDA Holdings is finding its debts difficult to digest, and this is the Digest that they're going to take us to in a moment.