Rachel Comey Explains How That Adorable Kitten Livefeed Got on Her Website’s Homepage

It’s a known fact that the Internet is a black hole of cat videos, pictures and memes. We may never know why they’re so popular or ubiquitous around the web, but we do know that even we’ve shared a few funny cat gifs in our day. The fashion world also has its set of die-hard cat fans–ELLE.com added a code that made pictures of cats pop up on its homepage (seems to be gone now), Choupette Lagerfeld has her own (unofficial) Twitter account and has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and on the cover of Vogue Germany with Linda Evangelista.  One of the Internet’s most recognizable feline faces, Grumpy Cat, recently paid a visit to the Vogue offices–and the magazine was only too happy to Instagram some choice moments for us.

So it wasn’t too surprising to hear talk of cats at yesterday’s Fashion Tech Forum, hosted by the Karen Harvey Consulting Group. The affair, which had Alina Cho on hand as emcee, as well as newly minted Yahoo Fashion editor Joe Zee, Nasty Gal #Girlboss Sophia Amouruso, The Gap‘s Rebekka Bay, and more. ELLE fashion news director Anne Slowey was also on hand for a sit-down with cult designer Rachel Comey to discuss her career, her first brick-and-mortar store (just opened in SoHo) and her social media/tech strategy which involves…you guessed it–cats. 

Good luck getting past the homepage at Comey’s website–it includes a live feed of the office kittens. You see them napping, playing and being generally adorable. WARNING: you will get sucked in if you watch, but you should definitely check it out

How did the kitty cam come to be? Rachel Comey dished on the deets:

“I didn’t have a website for so long, and I was trying to figure out what the site was going to be like. We decided on our homepage to be a livestream that’s a video in our office and we just point it at different stuff. At first, it was a cornucopia inspired by a Dutch painting we made in real time, and it was fruit and flowers and it kind of rotted. People couldn’t even tell it was live and by two weeks later, you see flies buzzing, and rotten fruit was disgusting–but awesome, because it was so slow… [Then] someone in my studio found some kittens that needed adopting, so we put the kittens up there, and got them adopted.”

Fortunately for us, there are more kittens on the site right now, rolling around, pawing, nipping and playing for all the world to see. Excuse us while we go waste a half hour watching them.


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