Exclusive Community Opens its Doors to Fashion Designers, Labels and Models

The fashion equivalent of MySpace has opened its doors to budding fashion designers, labels, and models to help them get their foot in the door of a cut-throat industry.

Rogue Connect (http://www.rogueconnect.com), a closed-door, exclusive online community, timed the opportunity to coincide with the Mercedes Australian Fashion Week, being staged in Sydney. Normally open to only socialites and ‘men-about-town’, the move is largely recognition of the fact that fashion is integral to the lives of the website’s members, and that many a talented designer fails through sheer lack of exposure.

Created by four Australian youths, Rogue Connect will now allow those in the fashion industry to create profiles which specifically showcase their talent. For designers, this means they can not only network within their industry to build relationships, and get feedback on their designs - but they can also raise consumer awareness within a perfect target audience. Similarly, the site now offers special profiles to cater for fashion labels and models.

"While most online communities ban self-promotion, we encourage it," says one of the website’s founders, Daniel P Dykes. "We want our members to get out there and make themselves known. It's a great way to allow up and coming designers, labels and models to blossom."

After just a week the new accounts have been well received, with a surge in sign-ups as designers and labels alike attempt to get membership. Being an exclusive community, people must be voted in or invited by other members. This has allowed Rogue Connect to cater to members of a much higher quality, but also prevent spammers from using the site. Instead, members are likely to be young, independent, fashionable, and tech-savvy. Demand for getting in to the online community is already high, with less than 50% of applicants being accepted. “The quality of our members is paramount and what makes it so worthwhile,” explains Daniel. “Other social networking sites tout the fact that they have millions of members, we'd rather have a smaller number of quality members interested in similar things. We're really about quality; quality people, quality of life."

About Rogue Connect
* Rogue Connect is a closed-door, exclusive community based at http://www.rogueconnect.com/
* Rogue Connect is a uniquely fashion-focused social networking website, which provides special membership for socialites, men-about-town, fashion designers, labels and models
* The website was created by friends Daniel P Dykes (23), Tania Braukamper (22), Renata Braukamper (24) and Allan Barger (21)
* Rogue Connect incorporates 'Web 2.0' technology and design, including folksonomy tagging and collaborative blogging, but doesn't promote itself strictly as such.