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This week, the New York Times reflected on the rise of the fashion blogger. "As a relatively new phenomenon in the crowded arena of journalists whose specialty it is to report the news of the catwalks," Eric Wilson writes, "fashion bloggers have ascended from the nosebleed seats to the front row with such alacrity that a long-held social code among editors, one that prizes position and experience above outward displays of ambition or enjoyment, has practically been obliterated."
Bloggers! They're everywhere!
The biggest fashion story of 2009 was the economy; selling fashion is tricky in a year when shopping -- particularly the kind of conspicuous consumption that the fashion industry relies on -- is entirely unfashionable. But fashion magazines aren't set up to write about not shopping, and so bloggers stepped in to fill the void.
What they wrote about was often how to make fashion work for real women. And they had plenty of inspiration, from real women's closets: Cathy Horyn, in another of the New York Times' Year in Style pieces, dissected Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama's closets, and described Palin's style as "businesslike without being boring, smart without being insider ... the way a lot [of] women would like to dress, and probably do, when they don’t have time or many choices and think that accessories always wind up looking prissy."
By contrast, Horyn writes, "In Mrs. Obama, the fashion industry has found a woman it can admire but cannot completely possess." As much as I would like to disagree with Horyn, I am begrudgingly compelled to admit that I think she's right: What women want from fashion is a look that is simple and appropriate and achievable -- ideally, in under fifteen minutes each morning. In this sense, both Mrs. Palin and Mrs. Obama are role models, but in the end, Horyn is on to something in her assessment that Palin is perhaps more of a role model for average women.
The bottom line, though, is this: 2009 may have been the Year of the Fashion Blogger, but more than that it was the Year of the Real Woman as Fashion Icon. While it is possible to argue that Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama were responsible for this democratization of fashion, there's more to it than that. As traditional fashion magazines cut back or folded or just fell out of touch with readers' economic and pragmatic concerns, bloggers stepped in to fill the void. Sites like The Sartorialist and Fashionist and Style Rookie showed us what was hip and hot on the street, and while Cathy Horyn may be right and we might all actually aspire to dress like Sarah Palin (or Michelle Obama!), it's always inspiring/interesting/intriguing to see what other real people are putting together.
But going digital isn't just the work of bloggers or magazines; companies need to get on the bandwagon, too. Writing for the Times Runway blog, Cathy Horyn reflects on a recent day of brick-and-mortar shopping ("At J. Crew, it was as though a bomb had gone off and wrinkled all the clothes. Had the steamer broken? Had they given up and were just heaving the clothes from out of the stock room like water out of a sinking boat?") and then turned her attention to the growth of digital outreach:
I’m also completely fascinated by the potential for fashion companies to really use the Web and digital technology in much more interesting and purposeful ways than they so far have. I don’t mean Facebook and Twitter and 13-year-old bloggers (isn’t she 16 yet?), but rather rethinking a brand in terms of digital and making it as important a consideration as design and print advertising, which is still what most brand managers trust. Some companies plainly “get it” (look at hermes.com), but more brand chiefs need to inform themselves and make digital a top-down priority.
Why does digital need to be a priority? Because companies who are looking to sell Sarah Palin's look (or Michelle Obama's or Tavi Gevinson's) need to connect digitally with consumers. Because the Internet is where we go for advice and inspiration -- and shopping.
Despite all of this, though, Eric Wilson disingenuously expressed a certain amount of amazement at the fact that fashion bloggers are now finding themselves on a par with traditional fashion journalists. Oh my! Who saw that
