Keeping Up With Chicago's Social Media Savvy Style Set

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

There's so much happening in the social realm that keeping up with it is almost impossible. So to catch you up on what the social media savvy style set is doing, we've compiled a few notable events and achievements from six local retailers.

Milk Handmade, among a ton of other local businesses without e-commerce websites, are using Walk.by, an online window shopping app designed by Lightbank, which is headquartered in the Groupon building. The app pushes an item listing, like this cupcake blouse, directly to Facebook or Twitter so the store's followers can shop the item from a non-e-commerce website. Just this week Walk.by rolled out a new version featuring filters like Instagram and Twitter so retailers can make products look even better.

As a vendor on Etsy and maker of #FASHION beanies, the The Gaudy God has always been social media savvy. And this week, he's made a gay "Instazine." This means a magazine in Instagram format. The first issue is titled 'The #Selfie Issue' and is 12 "pages" long.

Sometime within the past week or so, @ShrineStyle, the Twitter account for Oak Street's menswear accessory store Shrine, went missing. Suspiciously after Independence, an Oak Street Bootmakers venture, shacked up with the store, taking the majority of the space for itself, Shrine saw the opportunity to phase out of the scene. Even Shrine's once very robust website is non-existent.

Laura Kofoid of Laudi Vidni has been a busy bee thus far in 2013 by partnering with local personalities to create a limited edition custom line of bags (we'll get more into that later) as well as taking out space in the new offshoot of Lulu's at the Belle Kay, Lulu's on the Avenue. Last weekend, Laura launched a new version of Laudividni.com. As if Laura weren't getting the accolades she deserved from the last website, this new and improved shoppable version allows customers to easily customize the bag they want to order and has embedded video guides showing the features of the bags in action.

An image from apartment number 9's Instagram

Bucktown's best source for menswear is about to get a real functioning website for the first time ever. Owner Sarah Blessing tells us apartment number 9 will soon have something very lifestyle oriented within the next few weeks. The company has updated their Twitter and Instagram accounts and is actively working on maintaining new social media outlets to promote editorial features on designers, scenesters and topics of food and entertaining.

And for big time second city companies, so far, only two have been given the recognition on Vine as a verified Vine user: Threadless and Luxury Garage Sale. Luxury Garage Sale's Vines are more product focused featuring Chanel bags dangling in front of the camera and shoes magically walking around the boutique by themselves. Threadless posts Vines that are more lifestyle oriented, like footage of going night sledding at Mt. Trashmore, a guy in yellow pants and a beard with a wizard stick saying he's a wizard, or this zombie carrying a swaddled paper unicorn.
· All Tech-Tacular! Posts [Racked]

Foursquare

Apartment Number 9

1804 North Damen Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647 Visit Website

Luxury Garage Sale

1658 N Wells Street, Chicago, IL 773-360-7293 Visit Website

Independence

47 E Oak Street, Chicago, il

Foursquare

Shrine Haberdashery

47 East Oak Street, Chicago, IL 60611 Visit Website