[xjessiex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by maquillage The thing that saddens me these days is that so many blogs are essentially only a advertisement/display for the newest clothes and products. It's not about fashion anymore, but about fashion products. Of course sometimes the styling is inspiring, but still, they just display or mix and match the newest products, which functions as an advertisement. I don't even see runway pics or moodboards, just outfit pictures and pictures of clothes they want to have. It's very consumerist and more about shopping than fashion. I don't know if the increasing collaborations with companies are the cause or effect of this, but still I wonder: where are the blogs with ideas about fashion, with an editorial quality in them?

To be honest, the increasing collaborations sometimes worry me. I feel as though a lot of bloggers are young and naive and don't always know what they are getting into. For instance: a very well known Dutch blogger was given the chance to design a bracelet for a luxury company. Some readers responded that it is an exact copy of an already existing design. She had even posted a picture of the bracelet on her blog in a wish list. When I tried to point this out, I was told she was not aware of the existing bracelet "even though I posted it before". Needless to say, the post has been erased.

I'm sure a lot of bloggers dream of these sort of collaborations. I would too if I was their age. And some of them prove to be excellent business(wo)men, like Elin Kling. But I agree with a lot of people here that the majority of blogs lack creativity and substance. Luckily we don't have to read them if we don't want to

[tartan shirt.]

I think good fashion blogs are great. The ones where they show off their unique style but have commentary, or maybe something extra like how to get this look, or this hair etc.

One blog I used to follow religiously said she didn't care about fashion and didn't 'get it'. Now she frequently collaborates with Mulberry and YSL. Which confused me.

I think the major thing that irks me is when bloggers start out they seem to want to interact and have fresh ideas about fashion, but the minute money comes in or a label wants to work with them, then suddenly the comments are cut off and it's all very bland. That - along with it seeming every blogger praising Alexa Chung's style.

[TheDivinitus]

Maybe from more optimistic note, there are still bloggers who blog for blogging. Bill Cunningham explained in his documentary why he photoghraphs for free - "if they pay you they own you".

Basically what was already said, getting paid takes away that creative control the blogging was about. I wonder if there should be a term borrowed from the film industry "indie blogger", because "independent" doesn't mean a low budget, star free production anymore.

I keep rejecting any advertising or product placements on my blog, but if a *certain* designer offered me a collab and I agreed, I believe I would still stay true to my ideals.

[Lolaa]

Something I noticed is the similar posing: looking down at your shoes and touching your hair

[HeatherAnne]

Well written article on the subject:

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Are style blogs getting boring?by Kathleen Lee-Joe Jump onto Instagram and there’s @GaryPepperGirl in another random rooftop photoshoot, @TuulaVintage hop-skipping around Europe, and a thousand #WhatIWore posts featuring impossibly thin girls wearing impossibly expensive threads, prompting the usual smattering of comments - “I DIE”, “Gorgeous”, “Amazeballs”. I know, I know, haters gonna hate. But I swear, if I see another fashion blogger post a picture of Diptyque candles, a vase of peonies in a clean white loft, or an overspilling Celine tote from which Lucas’ Pawpaw Ointment, fashion week invites and a Smythson diary flows, I’m going to punch something. These blogs purport to be about showcasing real-life personal style and, as most put down in their About Me sections, seeing beauty in the everyday. The problem is, the “everyday” things they feature often cost two-month’s worth of my disposable income. With the succinct dropping of a designer friend’s name or a TwitPic of their hotel suite or latest purchase off Moda Operandi, my ability to relate is instantly lost. I’m left scratching my head, wondering how on earth a freelance stylist can afford such a lifestyle. I have the same reaction to street photography blogs - Jack & Jil, Garance Dore, Citizen Couture et al. A quick scroll-down of The Sartorialist and all I see is off-duty models on their way to a casting call, fashion editors decked out in head-to-toe designer threads (riding a scooter, to add insult to injury) and the occasional 50-year-old Asian male hipster wearing Air Force Ones and stylishly upturned camo slacks. Originally conceived as a means to democratise our perspective on contemporary fashion and create a two-way dialogue about how it relates to everyday life, the most popular blogs now almost exclusively feature photos of the wealthy elite in clothes I’ll never afford. Where are the thrift store chic outfits that used to feature so prominently? Where are the everyday girls who haven’t dressed up – consciously or subconsciously - to be style snapped? Are photos of expensively clothed, size zero subjects (couched as “real” women) walking the streets of SoHo really so different from watching the latest runway shows from New York Fashion Week? The fashion blog genre used to be about defying the mainstream and challenging traditional, glossy notions of beauty, not reaffirming them. It was once about celebrating the “every woman”, creating a space for expression and celebration of one’s self. That essential element of realness is now missing. The most renowned fashion blogs have become mere extensions of what we see in magazines and advertisements. There’s the professional photography, expensive product placements, heavy editing, the supermodel good looks. Their creators constantly eschew the opportunity to showcase real people in all shapes, colours and sizes, wearing real clothes that push the boundaries of what’s considered fashionable. The images they publish instead perpetuate a false and repetitive picture of what constitutes everyday style, worn by would-be models with friends in PR and access to lots of freebies. They’ve set an unattainable goal of perfection that links fashion with wealth and discredits beauty in diversity. The “every woman” has become yet another meticulously curated example of what every glossy fashion magazine stands for, where the same aspirations for high-culture and luxury apply. The thing is, if I wanted to see a bunch of well-dressed photogenic freaks doing fun, invite-only stuff, I would’ve bought this month’s issue of Vogue and flipped to the back pages. When I consider everyday style, I see something more real, more graspable, yet still subversive. The best style bloggers should be challenging our eye and training us to appreciate things that are new, yet accessible - not rewrapping looks straight off the catwalk and adding a rose-tinted Instagram filter.

dailylife.com.au

[glamrockgal]

great thread. I am a blogger too and also reading some fashion blogs- many of them Swedish and I see they promote a lifestyle and some brands that support these bloggers.I am bored of seeing freebies becoming their style so I dont follow any of them on instagram or twitter because they are all reposts.I try to read less popular blogs with great style tastes and I dont read many blogs.I quit reading massive ad like blogs because its no different than reading a magazine.I recently read less popular blogs who have high end style or vintage - thrift style but less popular.Its more inspiring to me.

[Not Plain Jane]

Did people hear about Suzy Menkes anti-blogger article, particular photo-bloggers? Quite the stir!

Quote:

We were once described as “black crows” — us fashion folk gathered outside an abandoned, crumbling downtown building in a uniform of Comme des Garçons or Yohji Yamamoto. “Whose funeral is it?” passers-by would whisper with a mix of hushed caring and ghoulish inquiry, as we lined up for the hip, underground presentations back in the 1990s. Today, the people outside fashion shows are more like peacocks than crows. They pose and preen, in their multipatterned dresses, spidery legs balanced on club-sandwich platform shoes, or in thigh-high boots under sculptured coats blooming with flat flowers. There is likely to be a public stir when a group of young Japanese women spot their idol on parade: the Italian clothes peg Anna Dello Russo. Tall, slim, with a toned and tanned body, the designer and fashion editor is a walking display for designer goods: The wider the belt, the shorter and puffier the skirt, the more outré the shoes, the better. The crowd around her tweets madly: Who is she wearing? Has she changed her outfit since the last show? When will she wear her own H&M collection? Who gave her those mile-high shoes?! The fuss around the shows now seems as important as what goes on inside the carefully guarded tents. It is as difficult to get in as it always was, when passionate fashion devotees used to appear stealthily from every corner hoping to sneak in to a Jean Paul Gaultier collection in the 1980s. But the difference is that now the action is outside the show, as a figure in a velvet shoulder cape and shorts struts his stuff, competing for attention with a woman in a big-sleeved blouse and supertight pants. You can hardly get up the steps at Lincoln Center, in New York, or walk along the Tuileries Garden path in Paris because of all the photographers snapping at the poseurs. Cameras point as wildly at their prey as those original paparazzi in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.” But now subjects are ready and willing to be objects, not so much hunted down by the paparazzi as gagging for their attention. Ah, fame! Or, more accurately in the fashion world, the celebrity circus of people who are famous for being famous. They are known mainly by their Facebook pages, their blogs and the fact that the street photographer Scott Schuman has immortalized them on his Sartorialist Web site. This photographer of “real people” has spawned legions of imitators, just as the editors who dress for attention are now challenged by bloggers who dress for attention. Having lived through the era of punk and those underground clubs in London’s East End, where the individuality and imagination of the outfits were fascinating, I can’t help feeling how different things were when cool kids loved to dress up for one another — or maybe just for themselves. There is a genuine difference between the stylish and the showoffs — and that is the current dilemma. If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion? The answer goes far beyond the collections and relates to the speed of fast fashion. There is no longer a time gap between when a small segment of fashion-conscious people pick up a trend and when it is all over the sidewalks. Now that women and men (think of the über-stylish Filipino blogger Bryanboy, whose real name is Bryan Grey Yambao) are used to promote the brands that have been wily enough to align themselves with people power, even those with so-called street style have lost their individuality. Smartphones are so fabulous in so many ways that it seems daft to be nostalgic about the days when an image did not go round the world in a nanosecond. In the mid-1990s, when I stopped having to run from the shows to the film developing lab and first saw digital images, I blessed technology and was convinced that my working life was changing for the better. I had no inkling of the role that images would play, pitting fashion’s professionals — looking at shows for their own purposes of buying or reporting — against an online judge and jury. While fashion pros tend to have personal agendas related to their work, bloggers start a critical conversation that can spread virally. Many of these changes have been exhilarating. It is great to see the commentaries from smart bloggers — especially those in countries like China or Russia, where there was, in the past, little possibility of sharing fashion thoughts and dreams — although I am leery about the idea that anyone can be a critic, passing judgment after seeing a show (from the front only and in distorted color) on Style.com or NowFashion. But two things have worked to turn fashion shows into a zoo: the cattle market of showoff people waiting to be chosen or rejected by the photographers, and the way that smart brands, in an attempt to claw back control lost to multimedia, have come in on the act. Marc Jacobs was the first designer to sense the power of multimedia. When he named a bag after Bryanboy in 2008, he made the blogger’s name, and turned on an apparently unending shower of designer gifts, which are warmly welcomed at bryanboy.com. Many bloggers are — or were — perceptive and succinct in their comments. But with the aim now to receive trophy gifts and paid-for trips to the next round of shows, only the rarest of bloggers could be seen as a critic in its original meaning of a visual and cultural arbiter. Adhering to the time-honored journalistic rule that reporters don’t take gifts (read: bribes), I am stunned at the open way bloggers announce which designer has given them what. There is something ridiculous about the self-aggrandizement of some online arbiters who go against the mantra that I was taught in my earliest days as a fashion journalist: “It isn’t good because you like it; you like it because it’s good.” Slim chance of that idea catching on among the fashion bloggers. Whether it is the sharp Susie Bubble or the bright Tavi Gevinson, judging fashion has become all about me: Look at me wearing the dress! Look at these shoes I have found! Look at me loving this outfit in 15 different images! Fashion has to some extent become mob rule — or, at least, a survival of the most popular in a melee of crowdsourcing. The original “Project Runway,” a television show that chose participants with at least a basic knowledge of fashion, has been followed worldwide by “American Idol”-style initiatives, in which a public vote selects the fashion winner. Who needs to graduate from Central Saint Martins in London or New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology when a homemade outfit can go viral on YouTube with millions of hits? Playing King Canute and trying to hold back the wave of digital fashion stuff is doomed for failure. But something has been lost in a world where the survival of the gaudiest is a new kind of dress parade. Perhaps the perfect answer would be to let the public preening go on out front, while the show moves, stealthily, to a different and secret venue, with the audience just a group of dedicated pros — dressed head to toe in black, of course.

From the NYTs

Here's the link with images: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2...us-of-fashion/

[Not Plain Jane]

At Fashionologie, some of the bloggers have responded:

Quote:

Consider it a master class in how to start a media firestorm. Suzy Menkes's recent T Magazine essay about the changing nature of Fashion Week has elicited passionate responses from the people she fingers as the cause of that change: bloggers. And how could it not? In The Circus of Fashion, Menkes laments that the focus of the biannual Fashion Weeks has shifted from the actual presentations to the people who stand and "peacock" outside them, waiting to be captured in outfits seemingly engineered to make photographers pay attention. "You can hardly get up the steps at Lincoln Center, in New York, or walk along the Tuileries Garden path in Paris because of all the photographers snapping at the poseurs," Menkes writes. "Cameras point as wildly at their prey as those original paparazzi in Fellini's La Dolce Vita. . . . I can't help feeling how different things were when cool kids loved to dress up for one another — or maybe just for themselves." Menkes's article, which ultimately questions whether bloggers have been good or bad for the industry, received so many responses that the International Herald Tribune issued a press release. To date, Susanna Lau of Style Bubble, Leandra Medine of Man Repeller, Isabel Wilkinson of The Daily Beast, and Khadijat Yussuff of Youth Savage have penned or promised responses. Here's a look at just a little of what's been said. Leandra Medine: "It doesn't seem quite fair to peg the bloggers that have actually become 'famous' as such just for being famous. When I think Tavi Gevinson or Susie Bubble or Emily Weiss or, on the street spectrum, Tommy Ton, I think recognition based on the merit of astounding work." Susie Lau: "I do want to address this issue after Fashion Week hubbub has died down, as I haven't quite figured how I feel yet, but for now, I suppose I have nothing to do except to go right ahead and confirm Menkes's exact suspicions: that we are all peacocking, however much we doth protest." Isabel Wilkinson: "You can't hate on all the fashion bloggers in the world just because you can't get into your seat at a fashion show without having to walk past a few of them. And they may be swaddled in astrakhan when you see them, but not all fashion bloggers have had it easy. . . . Many have started their blogs from scratch and invariably hustled to make money off of them. Some are real entrepreneurs." Khadijat Yussuff: "I think she fails to take into account the fact that a lot of these people are dressing for one another and themselves. . . . The point of personal style is that there is a trademark that is uniquely yours that you have developed and edited over time. And so what if it's out there, crazy, or impractical?"

[glamrockgal]

fashion insiders,models (modelsoffduty),fashion directors and stylists pose, get snapped and appear on street style blogs as much as some famous bloggers that I observe.I read so many street style fashion blogs and vlogs.

[Not Plain Jane]

^ I don't think Menkes would disagree; that's probably why she calls it a "circus"?

[Melisande]

Although her tone has more than a little bitterness to it, I kind of agree. Posing is definitely a phenomenon of the times. Children now pose before they speak, you know? And then, the fashion industry makes money off of these people peacocking and advertising these clothes, and hence encourages this behavior...so it's not just the bloggers' fault. I think it can be considered a continuum of the logomania consumer-as-advertiser phenomenon Tom Ford started.

As she says, I love people wearing outrageous fashion for themselves, but this look-at-me culture, which the fashion industry takes advantage of, is very annoying.

But then, it's fun too, to see more people dressed flamboyantly...What I'm really interested in is how it affects the creativity of designers and consumers and society as a whole.

[LagerfeldBoy]

Completely agree with Suzy. Take Bryanboy, for example. One of the worst offender of this. Remember that Margiela fur, hoodie thing that was gigantic? It was absurd, flamboyant, and his intention was to garner as much attention as possible.

[ssgghh]

Menkes` article is basicaly a rant. So what if people that dress for shock get more attention. If the editors wanted that kind of shallow attention they could do the same. Unless they do want that kind of attention but do not want to dress up like that, then i realise where their frustration comes from.
Nobody is stealing the designers limelight because the "shock-dressers" often do wear designers clothes, the only ones whos limelight is stollen are the ones that write articles like menkes´ and they should get over them selves.

[MulletProof]

I love her but I think she's getting a little too nostalgic there trying to resist time, sounds a bit like "in the good old days, we listened to..". God knows these people never consisted 100% of intellectuals but socialites too, social climbers, clowns, and other types of attention seekers, they may justify credentials with a blog much to the horror of many (including myself after taking a look at some of these godawful blogs) but you can't really blame them for having sketchy occupations, especially when they're as ruthless in consumerism as the next one (maybe not Suzy but those sitting next to Suzy and whose presence Suzy isn't questioning).

[kimair]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melisande Although her tone has more than a little bitterness to it, I kind of agree. Posing is definitely a phenomenon of the times. Children now pose before they speak, you know? And then, the fashion industry makes money off of these people peacocking and advertising these clothes, and hence encourages this behavior...so it's not just the bloggers' fault. I think it can be considered a continuum of the logomania consumer-as-advertiser phenomenon Tom Ford started.

it was started by tom ford, he just used it to his advantage...
plenty of designers starting in the late 70s were selling their name, putting it on everything from bedsheets to bags to dishes because they knew the masses wanted to appear to taste because they bought something from "so-and-so high end designer"

anywoo, i found a very interesting article online showing people like miraslava duma, anna dello russo and taylor tomasi hill about 4-5 years ago before the idea of dressing for photographers really took off and it was hilarious...
they looked like everyone else...

my issue with the article is that menkes seems to only be calling out the bloggers for doing something that everyone is doing, and that magazines and media are playing up...
did vogue.com have a section 4 years ago of just street style photos from fashion week?

i think menkes is a bit sore over the fact that non-journalists are getting the prime front row seats at shows and they are sometimes the ones photographers fawn over...
journalists/editors aren't there to look good, they are there to report on the clothes...