credit: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...ing-the-word-fashionista-20-years-ago/275048/
Stephen Fried author of Gia's biography discussing how and why he created the word "fashionista" 20 years ago, and yes that's the first time I heard it when I read the book.
                                         	                    
I Apologize for Inventing the Word 'Fashionista' 20 Years Ago
                   In 1993, an unsuspecting Gia Carangi biographer made up a word  to collectively refer to the many tiny factions within the 1970s fashion  industry. Today, it's everywhere.    
                   
Stephen Fried        Apr 17 2013, 8:46 AM ET     
                                     
 
                 
                 
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Pocket Books; Flickr user 
Royalty.Girl
   Twenty years ago, I apparently changed language forever. I published a  book that unleashed upon an unsuspecting public a single word of  terrifying power and controversy. That word is "fashionista." 
  I suppose I should apologize to all users of language for my crime  against nomenclature. I could also apologize to my wife, a writer and my  editor, who lobbied loudly against the word when I invented it—and  later came to believe that if we had only copyrighted it, we'd be  fabulously wealthy by now. (An English major, she also did a spit-take  when we learned my little word was being added to the Oxford English  Dictionary.) 
  The love/hate people have for fashionista was best captured by  well-known linguista author Ben Yagoda, who called me "Stephen  Frankenstein" for creating it and the "storm it of -istas that has  followed."
   
      
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   It is, I must admit, weird to have invented a word. And I'm still amazed at how it happened.
  Fashionista first appeared on page 100 of my 1993 book 
Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia.  I created it because as I was writing about the fashion industry—and  young model Gia Carangi's immersion in it—there was no simple way to  refer to all the people at a sitting for a magazine photo or print ad. I  got tired of listing photographers, fashion editors, art directors,  hairstylists, makeup artists, all their assistants, and models as the  small army of people who descended on the scene. This was also the group  that, according to one top fashion illustrator I interviewed, had  collectively become "the famous non-famous people" at Studio 54.
  Since I was re-reading a lot of the newspapers and magazines from the  period of Gia's supernova career in the late '70s and early '80s, and  remembering a lot of coverage of Sandanistas (and a lot of "–ista" jokes  among my mag writer friends), I just decided to try it. 
  The word only appeared four times in the book, and it did not  immediately catch on. In fact, the first mention of it, in a May 2, 1993  review in the 
New York Times Sunday Book Review, was a cranky  one: The author, Carol Kramer, a magazine fashion editor herself, dissed  my "vivid (if slightly unfair) indictment of what Mr. Fried ... who  tends toward hyperbole, calls the beauty-industrial complex." 
  And then she b*tch-slapped me for "fashionista," saying "he makes up corny labels, too." 
  I never gave the word another thought, frankly, until it started  showing up in the fall 1995 coverage of the European couture shows, both  in the London 
Evening Standard and the 
Washington Post. A Lexis/Nexis search showed it was actually used three times in 1994, 26 times in 1995, 54 times in 1996 and 74 times in 1997.
  The use of fashionista dramatically expanded in 1998, as did interest  in my book, when HBO made a movie about Gia's life, starring the young  (and extremely naked) Angelina Jolie. The word was used more than 200  times in U.S. newspapers that year. 
  And then, in 1999, came the announcement that fashionista was going  to be included in the OED. This led to a full-on attack of and by the  fashionistas, and 
a big piece on the front page of the 
New York Times  Sunday Styles section about the rise of the word, and the many meanings  it had taken on over the years. The writer, Penelope Green, went around  to many top fashion people and asked them what fashionista meant, and  if they were fashionistas. 
  Donatella Versace was quoted as saying "I am a fashionista and proud  of it." Fashion editor legend Polly Mellen said the word meant nothing  to her but wondered if it connoted a "fashion victim?" Tiffany Dubin,  then head of the fashion department at Sotheby's, said, "Oh, I aspire to  be a fashionista, to be hip, fun, ever-knowing. I don't think  fashionistas are victims."
  
Twenty years later, the OED defines it as  "a person employed in the creation or promotion of high fashion, such as  a designer, photographer, model, fashion writer, etc. Also: a devotee  of the fashion industry; a wearer of high-fashion clothing."
  Columnist Michael Musto said he used the word all the time even  though he was "not really sure what I mean by it ... it's one of those  wonderful words like 'tofu' that could mean anything you want depending  on the inflection." 
  I have been fascinated by all the different meanings the word has  taken on, many of them pretty arch. I never meant the word as an insult.  I think it's fair that the word has grown to refer to people in the  so-called "fashion mafia." But I never really thought it was right for  the word to be used to accuse people of being "fashion victims."  Honestly, part of the research and writing of 
Thing of Beauty involved a writer for national magazines (at the time I was working for 
GQ and 
Vanity Fair)  crossing the divide between the word people on the editorial staff, to  the visual people on the art direction and beauty side, and taking their  world seriously as a subject for investigative and personal reporting. 
  As a result, some of my best friends are fashionistas (at least by my original definition.)
  Twenty years later, the word is everywhere—most recently and  annoyingly in a bombardment of T.J. Maxx commercials. It sits happily in  its place it the OED, which defines it as "a person employed in the  creation or promotion of high fashion, such as a designer, photographer,  model, fashion writer, etc. Also: a devotee of the fashion industry; a  wearer of high-fashion clothing." 
  Since the entry does include fashion writers, I guess that means I am  technically a fashionista. Although, if you saw me sitting here in my  unfashionable office wearing the same t-shirt and jeans for the second  day in a row, I doubt that's the first word that would come to mind.