360Fashion App Knows What Chinese Women Want, Coming Soon to iPhone, Android, WP7

American model and entrepreneur Anina loves fashion, tech, mobile – and China. And that’s why the country is the focus of her 360Fashion Social news app. It comes preinstalled on all Nokia N9 (Meego OS powered) phones sold in the country and mixes curated haute couture news with deep Chinese social media integration. Indeed, the app is a sort of third-party Sina Weibo client all by itself, which helps users chat and share designer info and pictures without launching another app.

In conversation via email with PO, she says that China remains a focus for the team going forward. And so she’s looking at bringing the Chinese version of the app to Windows Phone 7 (WP7) later this year when Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) phones running Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) new mobile OS seem likely to hit stores in China.

Her company, 360Fashion, started up in 2005 and Anina is proud to say that, “I have funded my company myself and I am 100 percent owner.” The fiery-haired model’s fascination with China started with a modeling assignment in Hangzhou in 2007 – “I realized then, that if I wanted to become well known in China I had to go to Beijing and participate in the China Fashion Week during the Olympics.” And so she did, and that led to participating in panel discussions in the country, which led to her wanting to bring international – yet localized – industry news to young Chinese women.

Being a self-proclaimed fan of Nokia, Anina’s apps are not quite so full featured on other platforms: on iOS and Android, the app is shrunk down to be ‘360 Fashion News,’ without the in-built social streaming elements. Those apps have not yet been localized into Chinese, but Anina promises that they’re coming soon.

That long-running relationship with Nokia has won the company a top partnership award, presented by CEO Stephen Elop himself (pictured right).

Going forward, Anina says that she’s mostly sticking with Nokia:

For our 360Fashion Social news app, we are looking forward to the Windows Phone platform with Nokia. And also Android TV looks very promising in China.

It has been rumored that Microsoft’s WP7 will launch in China later this year, and doing so primarily with Nokia makes sense given the company’s (faded?) prestige in the country. Indeed, Microsoft is telling developers to prepare their WP7 app for distribution in China, so the Redmond giant – hand-in-hand with Nokia – seems to be close to a new move into smartphones in China.

What Chinese Women Want

As for the question of what Chinese women want in terms of fashion, Anina feels that it’s best served by a woman – and one who appreciates and understands cultural differences. She says that marks out her 360Fashion apps: