Kate Ciepluch (Kunst)

*****

Fashion Director, Shopbop.com. New York
We’re all about humble beginnings. We’re also firm believers that nobody starts as the CEO. It takes baby steps, time, and a litttttle bit of luck. Kate Ciepluch got her start in fashion a little over a decade ago at a little known company called ShopBop (that little known company is now one of our digital shopping bibles). She was working at their original brick and mortar shop in Madison, WI on the sales floor, folding tees and hanging dresses while she was a young’n during her freshman year at University of Wisconsin. She graduated, packed her stuff up, and headed to the big apple, and as the brand went viral, she climbed the corporate ladder (in Thakoon booties we can imagine), launching their footwear, swim, jewelry and handbag categories for the site, helping to evolve ShopBop from a primarily only denim source to a leading contemporary fashion go-to destination. And that she did! With countless snaps on every street style blog (we’ve always admired her sartorial choices), she continued climbing and climbing where she landed as the site’s Fashion Director, infusing her simplistic laid back style into the e-tailers business plan. Her New York City apartment has beautiful wood anecdotes and vintage finds, like the fish sculpture she nabbed at the Brooklyn Flea in Williamsburg. She is a California girl after all. Our ideal outfit: her rad IRO matte sequins motorcycle jacket with one of her outfit-completing hats. “I love hats because they provide this smart, pulled together look (and they are honestly great when you're hair is not at it's best)” she says. “It is the accessory that can take a mediocre sort of boring outfit to "cool" instantly”. Sorry Kate, but we really don’t think you ever have that problem!

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ONE morning early this month, Kate Ciepluch, the fashion director of the online retailer Shopbop, assembled members of her buying team in a conference room in the company’s offices on Broadway in SoHo.

Everyone in attendance was in her 20s or early 30s; Ms. Ciepluch, blonde and tomboyish and dressed in chinos and a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, is 28. She was a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when she started at the company, in its original Bop store, then moved to New York to become a buyer after it went online, in 2000.

Back then, the bulk of Shopbop’s business was in 7 For All Mankind jeans and Juicy Couture tracksuits. Today, the site is a leading purveyor of contemporary fashion — and its power baffles people in the industry. “We sell a lot of stuff on Shopbop, and we’re not exactly sure why,” said Leslie Rubisch, the press director at Alexander Wang. Next to its worldly big sister Net-a-Porter, Shopbop feels stubbornly attuned to its core audience, as though the site has been talking to them since college.

“They have tremendous credibility with these girls,” Paula Sutter, the president of Diane von Furstenberg, said, referring to Ms. Ciepluch and the buyers. In fact, on many items Shopbop will outsell DVF’s own site by three to one. As a company, Ms. Sutter said, “you’re crazy not to pay attention to what they do.”

If the buying habits of women in their 20s receive a disproportionate amount of attention — the big spenders, after all, are older people with both the means and the responsibilities — they also influence fashion, and have since the ’60s. So Alexa Chung has supplanted Kate Moss and Sienna Miller in influence. And it doesn’t seem to matter that Ms. Chung’s style of mixing her mom’s blazer with a frilly Topshop dress is just another micro-generation of the Kate-Sienna story. “It’s that juxtaposition that the Alexa Chungs of the world are loving right now,” said Sasha Sarokin, a buyer at Net-a-Porter.

There is plenty of research about the so-called Millennials — people ages 18 to 29 — to suggest you can’t lump them all together. Not only is this group likely to become the most educated generation in American history, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year, it is also the most racially and ethnically diverse. At the same time, this generation’s 37 percent unemployment rate is certain to affect taste. It may explain an underlying conservatism in fall fashion — penny loafers, camel coats, longer hemlines — that goes beyond “Mad Men” hype.

Lately, Hannah Byun, the founder of Hansel from Basel, a hosiery company in Los Angeles, has been wearing a below-the-knee skirt with woven sandals and a button-down shirt, in spite of her boyfriend’s comment that she looks like a Mennonite. That’s O.K. with Ms. Byun, 30, but actually she was thinking of Audrey Hepburn.

“Honestly, I feel very ‘Roman Holiday,’” said Ms. Byun, whose fall wish list includes LD Tuttle boots and an Acne military jacket.

What does unite this generation is the Internet, in particular online shopping and blogs like that of the street photographer Garance Doré and sites like Polyvore.com, where users play editor-slash-stylist and can see what’s for sale on the top sites.

Women like Ms. Byun, or Lauren Wynns, a 27-year-old law student in Washington, who works for a business consulting firm, or Nicky Deam, a 25-year-old publicist in New York, do much of their shopping online. Ms. Wynns, for one, said she now gets most of her fashion information from online retailers like Lagarconne.com, Revolveclothing.com and Shopbop, and from blogs rather than magazines. And because a lot of high-end apparel is hard to find online — compared with the amount shown on runways — it’s not surprising that young women now seem to gauge their interest in a brand not in terms of its prestige or craft but rather in terms of its accessibility. Even if Ms. Wynns could afford their products, she said, “their Web sites aren’t really tailored to a great shopping experience.”

You can understand why brands like Chanel want to limit their Web exposure, but what happens to interest if the immediate outlet is blocked? “This is not a generation that will wait to get a number for admission,” said Candace Corlett, a partner at WSL Strategic Retail in New York, a retail consultant. “They’ll find another way to get what they want.”

That’s what shopping sites are banking on. And it’s why their buying chiefs, like Holli Rogers of Net-a-Porter or Kris Kim, the founder of La Garçonne, have increased their clout with fashion designers, like David Neville, a founder of Rag & Bone, which has seen sales on Shopbop soar in recent seasons. Maybe these sites haven’t kicked the traditional store buyer out of the front row — yet — but they certainly have changed the game very quickly.

Based on interviews with design executives, like Shirley Cook, the chief executive of Proenza Schouler, three sites stand out: Shopbop, La Garçonne and Net-a-Porter, which has added more contemporary labels, including Isabel Marant, Rag & Bone and J. Crew, to its roster of high-end brands. La Garçonne is perhaps the most narrowly focused, with a boyish persona, as its name implies, while Shopbop is like your self-assured Midwestern cousin who always gets the guy. I sat down with members of each site to ask what’s on young women’s lists for fall.

From a rack of clothes in La Garçonne’s SoHo office, Ms. Kim and her buying assistant Mia Kim (no relation) ticked off their top trends, starting with a shaggy fake fur Proenza Schouler coat, about $3,100. “It’s a statement but not too much in-your-face,” as Mia Kim put it. “I would wear it more low key — just throw it on over trousers.” There were other rough fur pieces, in creamy lamb or fox from Vanessa Bruno and Charles Anastase, and shearling-topped Margiela booties that prompted Kris Kim to observe: “We’ve been seeing grunge, but a refined grunge. It’s a little nerdish and bookish.”

That could also be La Garçonne’s interpretation of chunky knits (styles by Zucca and Viktor & Rolf have been selling well) and pointy kitten-heel shoes worn with ankle socks, though that look has already been widely documented. The buyers also think their customers want a change from short skirts; they ordered a long tulip-shaped skirt from Rick Owens Lilies (around $500) and an at-the-knee ’70s style in clay-colored Ultrasuede from Le Mont St. Michel (about $300).

“We used to do a ton of business in charcoal gray,” said Kris Kim, who started La Garçonne five years ago. “Now the girls have moved on. They want colors — sophisticated greens and peaches.”

“Wearable color,” the other Ms. Kim added. “Nothing too bright or shocking.”

Net-a-Porter is based in London, but I met Ms. Rogers and Ms. Sarokin in a Greenwich Village restaurant — with their iPad. Both women are American, so that gives them a broad perspective on style. “I think the London girl does look better than anyone else,” said Ms. Sarokin, who is from California. “But are the hipsters going to be as good in London as they are here?”

She favors Burberry’s shearling aviator jackets (variations appear to be on many fall hit lists), tailored dark-rinse denim trousers, wedge booties and clogs and Stella McCartney’s clean sportswear lines.

Earlier this summer, Ms. Rogers was in New York. “I wasn’t here an evening before I realized, my God, everyone’s wearing these really short, high-waist shorts,” she said. “So I e-mailed the team, ‘Make sure we’ve got that covered.’ ” They got leather shorts from Theory that sold out in days. Ms. Rogers also sees, along with British heritage pieces like tweeds, a wave of Americana, like polos and dark, rolled-up denim. Nicky Deam, who works for the fashion publicity firm KCD, said she plans to extend her shorts into fall, wearing tights and booties. “I’ll make it demure on top so it doesn’t look like I’m working a street corner,” said Ms. Deam, whose main fashion expense is a couple of pairs of shoes every few months, or about $600. Also on her list is a camel coat and leopard-print shoes. “I’m definitely very guilty of going on a blog on Thursday night, finding something new and seeing if I can find the knockoff” at Zara or Topshop, she said. “I think, ‘Well, it’s only $20. I could spend that on an appetizer.’ ”

On the wall of the conference room at Shopbop, a collage of fall runway images had been mounted: military, Fair Isle sweaters, blush shades of pink. Yet the Shopbop team, which included Darcy Penick, the divisional merchandise manager, and the apparel buyers Alana Brown and Jane Albiter, had not merely represented the trends; they had also found ways to make them distinctive.

For instance, they asked Rag & Bone to make special camouflage-print trousers for them. As Ms. Brown said, “We sell these exaggerated harem pants so well, and we showcase them in a way that’s wearable for a girl in her 20s. Rag & Bone had this great camo print in their outerwear. We kind of suggested it for the pants.”

The designer Nanette Lapore had shown an olive wool dress with knit ribbing and cargo pockets that had been layered over a camel top. But she didn’t get enough orders for the dress and decided not to produce it. The Shopbop buyers asked her to make the $398 dress exclusively for the site. “It’s one of our favorite pieces,” Ms. Ciepluch said.

Many stores have trouble selling beige or blush tones, said Ms. Penick, a former Saks buyer. “We tend to sell it better than black,” she said. “We’ve seen a huge response to that shade in blouses.”

Winter shorts? “We’re showing them with thigh-high socks,” Ms. Ciepluch said. And she isn’t down on the mini. “I think it’s going to be around, especially how Proenza did it with the cool schoolgirl look. We also loved DKNY, Alexander Wang.” She added: “It’s a great dress alternative, especially for work. It kind of looks like you put some thought into it.” She summed up the fall look as “a smart mountain town styled with city chic.”

Jane Son, a 26-year-old publicist in New York, has seen things she likes from several labels, including Proenza, Chloé and Reed Krakoff. She just bought a pair of Acne wedge boots. So she is not stuck on a single label. That shift to a wider focus, brought about by women searching Web sites, ought to tell designers a great deal.

“It’s actually forcing the designers to be the leaders in fashion again,” said Ms. Cook of Proenza Schouler. They have to create products that are distinctive, that correlate to a purpose, and that are worth the price being asked, apparently like Proenza’s $375 striped T-shirts, which sell out every season.

“The Internet has brought a wealth of information and also boredom,” Ms. Cook said. “All those blogs and new ways to dress and shop. For me, it means we have to be much more on our game.”

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