As has now made the Internet rounds, Vogue.com published a Milan fashion week wrap-up on Sunday, which quickly devolved from a discussion about the clothes into a takedown of bloggers. At various turns, bloggers were accused of being "embarrassing," "sad," or "pathetic" — is it any wonder that many took offense? In the interest of full disclosure, I briefly worked for Vogue Runway last year, and all of the women who wrote the piece are women whose work I greatly admire. They're all sharp, highly-observant, culturally aware and regularly push the boundaries of what both fashion and fashion criticism can achieve — which is what made the piece especially surprising.
It's certainly true that street style has become less about having genuine style and more about piling on the most eye-catching, in-season pieces (some of which is paid product placement from brands, something akin to editors including clothing and accessories in magazine shoots to please their advertisers). We are all guilty of mocking the "season pushers," the women wearing fur in September and sandals in February to show off their newest goods; that is still very ridiculous, and editors are just as guilty of this practice. But bloggers, the "death of style"? I've long been tired of seeing the same handful of editors and industry insiders (all thin, it must be said) in slide after slide, season after season in street style galleries; the idea of the "model off duty" (skinny jeans, leather jackets, fresh-from-the-runway beauty, a gifted "It" bag) became a cliché long ago. As insiders like Anna Dello Russo upped the ante with their peacocking (which included multiple outfit changes per day) and more and more websites wanted a piece of the surefire street style traffic, the death of style — in this sense, at least — happened years ago.
And yet: The bloggers get photographed, and they get placed in those same slideshows. If you're tired of watching them commit "the desperate troll up and down outside shows," maybe just stop rewarding them. Of course, this train has already left the station. Do I feel incredibly annoyed when I show up to my fourth row seat at a show like, say, Jeremy Scott, only to see a front row filled with people I don't even recognize, but wearing head-to-toe looks of the designer's creation? Absolutely. Like many of my colleagues, I went to school to become a professional writer, logged hours interning, and continue to work really hard for my seat at a show. It can often feel like these women got theirs by being clever with an Instagram filter, attaching themselves to similarly stylish friends (sometimes literally) and not feeling any sense of shame when cameras are present — the latter being a skill I would like to learn, honestly.
But designers like Jeremy Scott — or, more accurately, the PR handling the seating at the shows — don't care about my master's degree or the years I've spent studying the inner workings of their brands, they care about selling clothes; and those bloggers, those influencers (which are two different things — a topic for a different day), move product. There's absolutely no denying this in a world where women like Chiara Ferragni are making millions of dollars each year and scoring major contracts (and, yes, international Vogue covers). This isn't something they could have achieved without some business sense, and let's be clear: These women are unquestionably running businesses.
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