When The Weekly’s Style Director Judith Cook began attending fashion shows, she was there to work and admire the designs. Today, she says, fashion shows are as much about the clothes people wear to them as the clothes on the runway.
In the November issue, formerVogueAustralia editor Kirstie Clements shares an exclusive extract from her second book: called a “novel”, it is clearly a thinly veiled exposé of the world of fashion magazines, bloggers and the Paris catwalks.
Here, Judith Cook gives her own account of the rise of the fashion blogger and how the industry has changed.
Fashion editors used to be part of an exclusive club.
Back in the day, we would go to Miuccia Prada’s atelier in Milan to see what she had come up with and it was like going to worship at a temple.
We were only be able to take 12 slides from each show for our report in the next month’sVogue, so we had to be discerning.
These days, with digital photography, everything is breathlessly recorded — no matter how good or bad.
Oscar de la Renta recently decided he was not going to invite celebrities to his shows because he believes the circus that comes with them only detracts from the clothes.
Yet it’s not just celebrities who are causing a distraction, it’s the new bloggers, too. Today, fashion shows are as much about the clothes people wear to them as the clothes on the runway.
At the recent Australian Fashion Week, the entrance to each show was a tangle of bloggers, stylists and fashion editors being photographed.
Many were snapped by friends, directed to look casual to make it seem the images were candid.
Those same pictures then showed up on their blogs within hours.
In some ways, it’s great there’s been a democratisation of fashion coverage, but you wonder about what has been lost.
The designers and the multinationals which own them seem less concerned.
Many of the new bloggers accept clothes and accessories — even overseas trips — in exchange for uncritical coverage on their blogs.
Many of them have become so compromised by the commercial deals they have struck, it’s hard to know what they actually like.
The issue is, when readers notice how uncritical some of these bloggers are of everything they post, will their credibility as fashion commentators start to be questioned?
Read the extract from Kirstie Clements’ new novel Tongue in Chic in the November issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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