So-Called Celebrity Product Search Site

I was all excited last week when I came across a Footwear News story on two new Web sites that offer the ability to search for fashion items seen in celebrity photos. Finally, I thought, I will no longer make a public fool of myself by looking at images of, say, Flavor Flav and guess that is wearing Ecko Red sneakers (when he's actually wearing Uptowns) or commit to print the thought that Kanye is wearing Reebok.

But then I visited the sites and, well, it looks like I'm going to still need a lot of help from readers who can tell the difference between a pair of genuine Air Force Ones and the many many brands that strive to copy the greatest sneaker of all times.

Visit the first site, Like.com, and right away, you'll see the first problem is that the images it features are limited to a handful of celebrities and then you hit issue No. 2, which is that the site's not trying to tell you what the celeb is actually wearing. The idea is to send you to a site selling "similar" merchandise. It's a "likeness" search not a real deal search.

I discovered this when I clicked on Diddy's image (one of only two males featured) and click on his shoes to see what brand they were. I was lead to a page listing page after page of K-Swiss. Now I may not know as much as many of my readers about sneakers, but I seriously doubt Sean is wearing K-Swiss. If not Air Force Ones, would he not at least wear his own brand of footwear? (Which, btw, doesn't show up in the first five pages of referenced shoes.)

Then there's another site called ChezImelda.com and not for nothing, that site is just a mess (and just now I checked it and it's down). Though granted it's still in development.

So there you go peoples, if you could develop a site that provided the real deal on what celebs are wearing--maybe give it an urban focus--and link it to the handful of sites that sell that shit, you might have something you could make some change off of.