Ladies' Special: The Dior App

Available on: iOS
Reviewed on: iPad
Price: Free

Introduction:

All the fashionistas rejoice, you have booked yourself a front row seat to the shows of one of the finest brands of the world, Christian Dior. Straight from the runway to your fingertips, the Dior iPhone app brings the latest and the best ranging from runway shows, make up items, perfumes, skincare products, ready to wear collection, watches and also very beautiful wallpapers. Read on to find out more about Dior on the iPhone.

Usability:

Dior welcomes us to the app first with language selection giving us the option of English and French. The app has six home screens which gives us the newest and latest information of the current season. It has a 'Discover' tab which when you click gives you a write up, video and screenshots.

More importantly the UI is divided into three panes which are News, Apps and Stores.

When we tap on the News pane, we can swipe it upwards and down and navigate through various fashion related news-pieces. Each news-piece comes with a corresponding image. These news are basically the latest campaigns from the fashion house which includes everything from the latest runway shows, make up trends, perfumes, men's collection, kids' fashion and timepieces. Once you click on particular news, for example 'The 2011-12 Autumn Winter Women Haute Couture Show', you will get a write up, a sneak peek preview video of the show and screenshots of the collection. This is the same for all the news-pieces.

This pane becomes helpful to us as in we do not really have wait for the premier of a runway show on Fashion TV or wait for the details of a new product on a magazine. We can directly get all the information in the App. Dior users will not need to wait anymore, all the information will at their finger tips.

The second is the Apps pane. We can browse through the apps in a Coverflow like User Interface which is very easy on the eye.

Out of the five Apps, the Fragrance App and the Timepiece App are downloadable apps on their own and when you click on them will redirect you to the App Store. The rest three Apps, Make Up, Skincare and Extras are in-built.

The Make-Up App gives you information about products, step by step procedure of applying them and also tutorial videos on how to achieve a particular look. So those who don't understand how to use their Dior product this app will be a handy companion.

Thanks to Dior we can get now rid of wrinkles and age spots through the skincare app. It basically offers various skincare programs involving Dior products. The core program is about the anti-aging product and it provides details of how the anti-aging product works on the skin and also gives us details of ingredients so that we actually know what we're buying and why we're buying it. Pretty handy indeed!

The Extras App has wallpapers of Dior products along with images of brand ambassadors. Share these images with everyone because no one can say no to Dior and especially when it has images of the very hot Jude Law,  Charlize Theron, Monica Belluci and Marion Cotillard,  the official faces of Christian Dior.

The last pane is the Dior Store Locator. Unfortunately it does not give any information about any Dior store in India (Though we know for a fact there is one in the DLF Emporio mall which is situated in the capital) and when clicked on Dior Store Locator option, the App crashed. It's quite an astounding oversight as we could replicate the crash each and every time we clicked on the stores option. Generally as courtesy we would prefer it if the app would say 'Sorry information not available' rather than crashing. It's kind of rude but that's just a thought.

Since it's an iPhone app rather than a universal iOS app we do not get to enjoy all the eye candy in all its glory on the larger iPad display, instead we need to suffer through some pixelated pixies. Bummer, we would have definitely preferred a universal app, hopefully Dior is listening a developing one!

On the whole the UI is beautiful and is very user-friendly making it quite addictive for fashion enthusiasts.


Verdict:

This app is definitely a visual delight. It is user friendly with very neat displays and provides all the required information. Social network integration is another nicety we appreciate especially good for a fashion buff. But the best part about this app is that it's free. Apart from the crashing issues Dior for the iPhone is full of the visual panache that the brand is known for. Right from a show to applying makeup, this app has it all.  While many fashion houses have their apps but the Dior app is one of the best in terms of usability and visual appearance.

Rating: 4
Usability: 4
Price: 5
Wow Factor: 4