This week Armani announced a shopping spree contest worth $5,000, in conjunction with Vindigo, a browser designed for handheld gadgets like the Palm. The gist is that all Armani shops will now offer Vindigo beaming stations, which give you an up-to-date digital run down of everything "worth doing" in a given town. The broadcast of Vindigo from the stores, starting on the 15th of September, coincides with a $5,000 give-away that, among other cities like New York, will take place at Armani in San Francisco.

But this isn't the first hint of a high tech/high couture three-way involving the Net, the Bay Area and fashion. While it's not as prevalent as say, gaming or publishing, the fashion industry has also reared its beautifully sculpted head in the SF dot com invasion. And after the fallout that has brought down so many other types of sites, it's one area that's showing more staying power than experts may have originally expected.

Stanford-based Fashionlines.com, which just celebrated its first year of operations in June, is regarded as one of the top "insider" sites for what's going on in fashion, largely because of its boss, Christine Suppes, novelist, former writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, part owner of Moda Magazine, and all round "fashion sophisticate." Fashionlines covers everything from runway trends and high profile interviews to travel tips for fashionable cities, restaurants and museums.

Suppes started the company as a way to bring the "good and original ambiance of print magazines like Vogue, Bazaar, Playboy and Esquire" to the Net. And one look at her site shows that she's pulling it off, despite a few glitches in industry attitude.

"We are still being taken less seriously than we should by some fashion houses," says Suppes, "but this is because they do not understand that everything is now online and this is the best way to reach the largest audience." Suppes, who is owner, Editor-in-Chief and Producer of Fashionlines, notes that as the technology changes, she will be adding more video and other high profile methods of getting beauty and style out to people via the Web.

"Our readers want to see beautiful photographs and read inspiring stories about women who have made a difference. They want to fall into this world that fashion magazines have created for them." For Suppes, that means everything from day-to-day management of editorial to conceptualizing the original photo shoots to "schlepping out for the Chinese food and drying the eyes of temperamental models and photographers." So far, the hard work is slowly paying off. Fashionlines reports about 750 page views a day, and is currently logging in visitors from 63 countries.

FOR MEN THERE'S TheMan.com

The world of men's fashion eZines, along the lines of GQ or Esquire, has not worked out as well as the women's side of the business -- at least, not in terms of content. San Francisco's TheMan.com, which launched about the same time as Fashionlines and featured a men's slant on everything from gadgets to Gucci, recently revamped to be much more of an eCommerce site (where you can buy gadgets and Gucci rather than just read about them).

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Steve Lombardi, co-founder and Vice President of Product Development at TheMan.com says that the new version of TheMan is actually what was planned all along. "What was intended hasn't changed. But we've re-purposed our content from the original channels model, which gave it more of a magazine feel, into situations that men will encounter at work, with women. So we present them with products and advice and articles that fit that situation." Lombardi says the revamp was mainly due to reader response, guys wanting not just advice that they should "buy a blue shirt" but wanting to see, and be able to actually buy the blue shirts. "Our plan was and is to serve men, not to just sell products or just have editorial. They are both equally important."

"Most guys we are serving are interested in looking good so they can do well at work or with women, not the fashion industry itself. They are time-constrained professionals between 25 and 35 who don't have time to keep up on anything," he explains. "That's why we sell products and why we aren't really an eZine in that way."

A division between the sexes on how men and women see fashion? The Mars and Venus debate as to what men and women want in their magazines is as old as, well, fig leaves in the Garden of Eden.

"TheMan.com has some hysterical articles...girls writing about sex and so on -- but there's a difference right there," jokes Suppes. "If I'm going to bother sticking my neck out to get front row haute couture seats from the top fashion executives in the world (which I routinely do), I sort of think they would like to see their efforts rewarded in an upscale and elegant classical fashion way."

On a more technical note, Suppes says one way fashionlines.com managed to stay afloat -- and keep an eye on the bottom line -- despite the crash-and-burn disasters of other sites, is by keeping her staff to a "bare bones minimum" of committed people who work hard and know exactly what the site is all about.

"When I hear about these online magazines who get ten-million dollars from venture capitalists, then blow seven-million on advertising and the rest on top salaries for a staff of 150 to 600, I laugh. Then I say bye bye, because they always tank. Our monthly budget wouldn't keep Ivana Trump in shoes and pantyhose, but you know what? It works for us!"

Though, that doesn't mean she's not thinking monetarily. "We're getting to a point where I will be looking for a buyer--ideally someone who could use what we have developed." But Suppes adds that even if she's not the eventual owner of the site, "I would like to stay on as Editor in Chief as long as possible, because my vision is very clear just now. I see fashion clearly and I see the future of the Internet equally so. They are hopelessly intertwined."