As the latest London Fashion Week kicks off, fashionistas are spoiled for choice when it comes to smartphone and tablet apps

For now, the fashion/apps crossover remains a distinctly off-catwalk affair. There may be official Candy Crush Saga socks, but as yet no designer has grasped the nettle of popular digital culture to send their models out dressed as candies, Angry Birds or plants and zombies.

Maybe this month's London Fashion Week will see that change. Assuming not, though, there is still plenty to talk about in the way the fashion industry is using smartphone and tablet apps to reach its customers – and how those people are using apps to reach one another too.

Gucci Style

FASHION BRANDS

Let's start with the big fashion brands, and a couple of general thoughts. First: the people in charge of commissioning apps for these companies clearly like their iDevices, for Android versions are thin on the ground.

Second: a lot of big fashion brands are still a bit unsure what apps are for, judging by the number of barely-more-than-a-brochure promotional apps, and a fair few that haven't been updated for a year or more.

Some of the more interesting ones: Gucci Style (iOS) which is pitched as a "shoppable magazine" looking behind the company's new clobber, rather than simply showing pretty pictures of it (although yes, there are plenty of those too).

Christian Dior has also gone down the digital-magazine route with its Dior app (iOS / Android), offering a mixture of previews, interviews and backstage videos. "Life inside the House of Dior" as it puts it.

Lacoste has a well-designed Lacoste Shop shopping app (iOS) but has also dabbled in more magazine-like content too through its Lacoste L!VE app, which took a look at Japanese fashion and culture alongside the brand's Spring/Summer 2013 line.

Dolce & Gabbana's main DGW14 app (iOS / Android) is firmly focused on showing its latest collections and helping people find the clothes in stores, but the company has tried other apps too: Kylie (iOS / Android) to show the stage wardrobe it created for Kylie Minogue's last tour, and Dolce & Gabbana Watches (iOS), a virtual-watch app to showcase its real timepieces.

Wild cards? There's Amble with Louis Vuitton (iOS), which is less about plugging clothes and more about getting people to save and share photos, notes, videos and sounds of their travels, complete with city guides for London, Barcelona, Madrid and other cities around the world.

For now, more brands are opting for stylish-but-standard apps offering product images, news and shopping information, from Benetton (iOS / Android) to Mulberry (iOS), Hugo Boss (iOS) and Chanel (iOS).

Mr Porter – The Tux

FASHION MEDIA

You can already buy or subscribe to pretty much every major fashion magazine through an iPhone and/or iPad, courtesy of Apple's Newsstand. With Google launching its own digital magazines store for Android, expect more of these digital replicas to transfer to that platform too.

What's happening beyond that though? Besides its replica apps, Vogue has Vogue Daily News (iOS / Android) which is much more focused on daily fashion news, interviews and "all the most stylish party pictures". It's a sign of a fashion magazine using apps to build a more-frequent relationship with its readers, sitting alongside its website.

This spin-off strategy extends to Teen Vogue, which besides its main app also has Teen Vogue Snapshot (iOS) that delivers young readers a daily "best-dressed girl" for sartorial inspiration, and invites them to submit their own photos in response. There's even a mobile game, Teen Vogue Me Girl (iOS / Android) putting readers in the shoes of a Teen Vogue intern.

Other magazines are focusing more on apps as new ways to present their beauty content. Beauty Genius by Marie Claire (iOS) is all about hair and make-up how-to videos, from Cheryl Cole's waves to Kate Bosworth's "perfect red pout". Rival Glamour has its own Glamour Fast Beauty app (iOS), although it's more text and picture-tips than videos.

Marie Claire has also experimented with video and apps in other ways, through three Runway apps for iPad that offer videos from the London, New York, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks. The last version was Marie Claire Runway 3 (iOS), released earlier this year to cover the Spring/Summer 13 collections.

Another British mag, Grazia, has taken a different spin, adding e-commerce to its Grazia (iOS) iPad digital edition. The idea: readers can buy the items they see on the pages from within the app. Yet watch the trend – that's been around for some time – of apps coming from the other direction: fashion retailers launching their own print magazines, which are also going digital.

Net-A-Porter Magazine (iOS) and its sister (well, brother if we're being accurate) app Mr Porter The Tux (iOS) are good examples, as is the Asos Fashion Up magazine (iOS / Android). So magazine apps are selling products, while product retailers are producing magazines. Consider boundaries truly blurred.

eBay Fashion

SHOPPING

What about those retailers and their regular apps though? It's noticeable that many of the key fashion retailers are supporting both iOS and Android – a sensible approach in 2013, given the huge sales of Android smartphones and the growing number of tablets too.

So, there are cross-platform apps from Net-a-Porter (iOS / Android) and Mr Porter (iOS / Android), Zara (iOS / Android), Topshop (iOS / Android), Victoria's Secret (iOS / Android), H&M (iOS / Android) and others: it's rare to find a retailer without an app, or at least a mobile-optimised website. Strangely, Asos (iOS) is iOS-only for now.

New directions in fashion shopping from smartphones and tablets? There are a few. eBay, for example, has a pair of interesting apps. Svpply (iOS / Android) is a "hand-selected collection of the world's best products" from more than 110k stores and brands, and while it covers tech, home, art and other products, it's very big for fashion too.

Then there's the main eBay Fashion app (iOS), which helps you browse the new, designer, branded and vintage fashion being sold on eBay, with a section showing off ideas from fashion bloggers as inspiration. There's also an inventive Image Swatch feature: point your camera at something in the real world and find items on eBay whose colour matches it.

It's a feature also found in the Lens Color Shopping by Fashionfreax app (iOS) which matches products to colours found through the iPhone camera. And the company behind it has a separate Fashion Freax Street Style App (iOS / Android) to show off new looks from around the world.

There are also some apps to help ethical shopping. Think Dirty (iOS) lets you scan cosmetics products barcodes to find out about the "potentially toxic ingredients" that lurk within them. More than 10k products are in its database. Sadly, Channel 4 appears to have shut down its Closet Swap website and removed its iOS and Android app, but when it was live, it helped people swap clothes with friends and find sustainable (i.e. vintage and charity) shops nearby.

Pose

SOCIAL APPS

Finally, there's a healthy crop of apps designed to get people sharing their current fashion with the world. Pose (iOS / Android) is one of the most popular, claiming millions of users sharing their favourite outfits, and following those of famous bloggers and celebrities.

It's interesting because the latter has traditionally been the domain of magazines. Apps like Pose are disrupting that, while also hammering home the point that anyone with an eye for clothes can be just as inspiring.

There are others too: Fashism Mobile (iOS) includes the ability to ask other users whether a product or combination suits you, by sharing a snap. Walk In My Closet (iOS) adds a digital moodboard, Trendabl (iOS) has more of a skew towards following brands and tastemakers, Stylebook (iOS) is a buzzed-about digital closet to import your current clothes and scope out your future outfits.

Snapette (iOS / Android) throws in a shopping angle, helping you see what people are wearing in key fashion hotspots and where to buy them. And finally Cloth (iOS), rather marvellously, includes a weather function to help you decide which outfits in your wardrobe match the current conditions outside in the real world.