Jane Buckingham

The Internet is the world's front-row seat to fashion. You don't have to rummage through crowded store racks or pay for a personal shopper; the Web will do it for you. Aggregator sites and social networks give anyone insider status, offering up-to-the-minute news about sales and new merchandise. Runway photos are posted online minutes after the shows end, and style how-tos are not confined to the pages of glossy magazines; they are everywhere. The Internet's share of retail clothing sales has been well documented.

Jane Buckingham, a slender, blondish woman in a diminutive pearly gray dress and knee-high black boots, clearly has a following. The 39-year-old founder and chief of the Intelligence Group was standing at the podium in a swank conference room at the Sofitel hotel this fall addressing 50 marketers from studios, major game developers, cellphone operators and toy companies.