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Dazed Instagram

How Instagram is looking to its fashion and design users to build premium credentials

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

September 30, 2015 | 3 min read

Instagram is harnessing its design and fashion-forward users to help it build a more premium positioning as an artistic outlet as it looks to protect the user experience amid an influx of branded content on the site.

With the social platform an increasingly important media channel for luxury and fashion brands, bloggers and models, the recent hiring of former Lucky magazine editor-in-chief, Eva Chen, to the new role of head of fashion partnerships, signals Instagram’s intent to start pushing its "art gallery of the future" pitch more.

As part of this, the social network yesterday (30 September) revealed a partnership with youth fashion and culture magazine Dazed for a specially curated art installation in East London, showing photography taken by a handful of its users.

Speaking at the event, Instagram co-founder and chief executive Kevin Systrom, said that there had been a lot of interest in his decision to hire a former fashion magazine editor to serve its fashion community specifically.

“Our first value is community first and as we looked throughout the community we said ‘where are the hot groups in the community that we could invest in, build relationships with, understand how they use their product and things they need out of the product that we aren’t currently providing?’”

“As we go deep with these groups we learn so much and we think you have [Chen] helped us even though you’ve only been on the team 64 days. We’ve learnt a tremendous amount just by being close to these different groups and I think you’ll see that over the coming years.”

Instagram now plans to continue to invest in other groups inside of its community with Systrom admitting that it is something “we need to understand more over time”.

Speaking about trends on Instagram Chen said that she sees content “moving away from selfies” with more images being snapped of other people and objects.

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