If anyone has firsthand experience of the fashion and tech world crossover—once a reluctant toe-dip, now arguably a fait accompli—it’s Yuli Ziv.

A branding veteran from the marketing world, Ziv wrote the book (Blogging Your Way to the Front Row) on how to make a career out of fashion blogging and is founder and chief executive officer of Style Coalition, a 4-year-old network of 40 fashion and beauty blogs with 3.5 million monthly visitors.

Tomorrow night, on the eve of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York, Ziv is producing the Fashion 2.0 Social Media Awards, which unites fashion luminaries who are on the forefront of technology.

Ahead of that New York City fete, which will feature TV fashion host Robert Verdi and a keynote by designer Norma Kamali, Ziv chatted with Portfolio.com about three signs of fashion and technology’s double-air-kiss familiarity.

1. Fashion Bloggers on the Agenda

You know those scribes/photographers/video producers who put together fashion blogs? Call them influencers, not bloggers, and their audiences are more targeted than ever.

“They started with a blog, but today they are influencers,” says Ziv. “They have a Twitter following, they have Facebook fans, they may have a YouTube channel.”

Besides being multichannel, each Style Coalition blog has a different niche—from College Fashion, which boasts millions of users, to Corporette, which gives wardrobe and beauty advice to women in the corporate world, such as lawyers.

Ziv’s network of blogs makes money through advertising that lets clients target those specific niche audiences, and through a revenue partnership with Elle magazine, and Hearst Digital Media, for which it provides branded content and video events in coordination with brands ranging from Lancome and Microsoft to J.C. Penney. They don’t share editorial content with Hearst, but that’s something that Ziv says she is pursuing.

2. Minimalist Technology, Maximum Style

Fashion brands used to be uneasy travelers in the tech world—and some found it unseemly to even sell merchandise online. But with mobile devices like smartphones and the iPad, technology has gone all Calvin Klein minimalist—and that suits fashion just fine.

Mobile apps like digital pinboard Pinterest, photo-sharing app Instagram, and blogs like Tumblr beckon the fashion industry with the ability to share images on the fly.

“They’re so visually driven, (fashion brands) are seeing it as another layer or medium to explore as part of presenting their ideas,” Ziv says. Pinterest, for example, is very similar to the mood boards used in fields such as fashion and advertising and that allows designers to share the inspiration behind their pieces.

Brands are increasingly letting those viewing the shows preorder the items they see on the runway. Burberry has been at the forefront. There is also more live streaming of fashion shows in New York.

“The industries are here in New York: There’s a big tech scene and a big fashion scene,” says Ziv “A lot of the innovation we see is on the digital side, on the media side, in the way the shows are presented, and the way they are communicating with the audience from the runway.”

Another innovator in the fashion-technology space is Gilt Groupe, founded by Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank, winners of this year's Fashion 2.0 Visionary Award. Although it hit a rough patch that involved layoffs recently, the fashion industry—which is trying to wean consumers off deep discounts—views it as a leader for diversifying its business beyond the discount flash-sales model toward more full-price offerings.

“They’re almost the Neiman Marcus of the new generation,” Ziv says. “They were smart to separate themselves from the mass and come up with new sub-labels and put themselves in a separate category as an online retailer.

3. Instant Gratification?

When Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week begins on Thursday, designers will be revealing their clothes for the fall 2012 season, even though it’s not yet spring.

The six-month lag between runway and retail is a frustration for digital types. It was no problem when print magazines that ran the photos three months later were the only media game in town. But live blogging and instant images from the shows has made Fashion Week seem out of sync.

“They get all this buzz with new media, but no conversion [to sales],” said Ziv. “The environment has changed completely, so the question is how do we adjust and take advantage of all of these opportunities?”

Designers aren’t the only ones to blame. They are dealing with 100-plus-year-old European factories that are stubbornly sticking to a seasonal schedule and retail buyers who plan far ahead.

But just as Gilt Groupe shook up the fashion world with its flash-sales model, Ziv suspects that a startup may find a niche in right-now runway fashions.

“I’m wearing a summer blouse today, and I’ll find a way to wear it in the fall and the spring and the winter,” said Ziv, who paired a cream-colored ruffle shirt with a heavier-weight skirt and jacket. “Don’t tell me I can’t wear it when I want to wear it.”

Australian Fashion Week—which hosts separate events for the industry and consumers—has done a good job of this, says Ziv.

“You can literally see a show and take a picture and literally preorder from the phone,” she says. “They’ve been doing that for years. Why not here?”

Voting on Style Coalition’s site is open through this evening, and the ceremony will be streamed live.

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Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com