Google’s latest unbranded, venture into the fashion industry with visual search site Boutiques.com seems to have Olivia Palermo onboard for endorsement.

Olivia Palermo is a New York socialite with an international profile after she starred on MTV‘s reality TV show ‘The City’ as well as being a popular style muse captured by street fashion photographers like The Satorialist.  Her endorsements in the past included British retailer TopShop which helped raise the brand’s profile after it opened it’s first store in the United States in New York in 2009.

Olivia’s twitter followers  & fans would be like-minded women with the disposable income for designer labels.  This is definitely the demographic that Boutiques.com needs to establish it’s position in the online fashion community.

Gilt seems to be extending the concept of A/B testing into gender testing.  I noticed today while my partner was shopping on Gilt Groupe that the look and feel of the male member’s UI features a unique logo & colour scheme.

Subtle and easy to implement – yet the benefits to conversion & reinforcement of Gilt’s brand strategy would no doubt bring so much more in returns.

Google takes on Polyvore with competing visual searches for fashion, Boutiques.com The site is noticably unbranded by Google.

On sign up, you get categorised into a style type.  The Stylizer works by presenting you with dozens of celebrity red carpet photos and you’re asked to select which style you prefer.  Once you’re in, Boutiques.com recommendation engine goes hard with presenting you with items you’ll probably like.

The site launched last month, and I’ve noticed that they have had several iterations since then to bring the UI up to scratch.

I’ll be very keen to see how Boutiques.com progresses with new features, and whether Polyvore takes on the competition by introducing new features of their own.

I window shopped at Source4Style today.  This crew from Brooklyn have created such an inspirational startup that sells sustainable fabrics for trade purposes.

Depending on the supplier, you can buy only a few metres – which makes this site a good source for interior designers too.