In the digital world, sometimes there’s nothing more eye-catching than a well-made collage. On a blog, on a website, on Instagram or Facebook – you know you stop to look when you scroll across an intriguing collage. Polyvore thinks so too, and that’s why they’ve created a global community with a new way to discover and shop for things you love. That’s right, through the creation of collages inspired by the website’s members.

How does it work?

Polyvore is essentially a shopping website, however, the company takes a different approach to the standard e-commerce model and introduces a new type of online commerce: social commerce. Polyvore is fueled by a global community of members who curate products into a shared product index and use them to create image collages called “sets.”

I decided to try it out myself. It just took me under 5 minutes to make this collage… I thought it would be fun to combine two fall trends: booties and a pointy toe. This is what I came up with through the product index in Polyvore and the incredibly simple collage-maker… no photoshop skills required! Polyvore makes it easy for anybody to create a masterpiece. I only imagine what I could do in more time… this could get addicting!

The products on Polyvore are organized into categorized lists which members can browse and choose from while creating their collage-sets. Polyvore has just about everything you can think of needed to make a collage – from the actual products like boots, outerwear, or home furnishings, to magazine clippings, people, text, and patterns – Polyvore makes it easy to create designs that look professional.

Collages are shared through the website where members can like each other’s collages and even purchase items from the sets that they want to buy. For instance, to the left are some of the products that show up next to my collage.

Today the Polyvore community has created over 80 million collage-like sets that are shared across the web. To become apart of Polyvore’s global community that is changing the idea of online commerce, visit the website to make your first creative collage or even just to shop and gain inspiration.