reflection: musings on fashion blogging #3

There's an ongoing thread at the Fashion Spot that's kept my interest for the past month or so on the topic of fashion blogging. I've had a few things to say about this topic in the past, but a newly discovered revelation has really garnered my attention.

Exhibit A:

from Facebook group, Il Covo delle SoloAvvilite

Before I begin, I want to state that I don't read The Blonde Salad, nor do I know anything about Chiara except that she got invited to Cannes this year, which made me very jealous. In fact, I don't read any of the blogs that she supposedly copies because none of them give me intellectual fodder. (I like my fashion photos to be accompanied with ramblings on consumerism, sexism, racism - essentially anything with an -ism at the end.)

Exhibit B:

Chiara's interview starts at 2:30.

At the same time, I do have to ask who the fuck invites a girl like this to a fashion show and then asks her for an interview in which she describes everything as "nice." I'm going to cut her a break on the "it was a little bit less edgy and fashion than woman's shows" [sic] and "there was less checks than usual; it wasn't so much Burberry" [sic] because English is not her first language. I am going to suggest grabbing a thesaurus and finding some synonyms for "nice." But I have to draw the line on the description of "ethno-chic." First, what is that supposed to mean? And second, is that a word you would EVER use to describe BURBERRY?

When I heard "ethno-chic," it made me think of the late 90s/early 00s when designers LOVED to put "Chinese inspired" designs down the runway. I'm talking cheongsam/qipao detailing, dragon printed silk (seat covers at Chinese restaurants), even the pointy hats - which, in my opinion, is one of the most extreme forms of sartorial racial objectification that I've encountered in the fashion industry. (There are probably more, but I wasn't around to experience or view them on the runway, so I'm going to discount them for this argument.) Her use of "ethno-chic" is probably a nod to Bailey's use of ikat prints, but the underlying presumption of the Burberry Prorsum FW '12 show is still undeniably modern prep, which is the image both Burberry and Bailey present consistently. The entire scenario just highlights that Chiara (and many other popular fashion bloggers) is an extremely inadequate fashion journalist (because that's how she got into the show, right, as press?) as she's only capable of parroting descriptions she must've picked up from other writers without the sense to pair the proper buzz words with the right designers.

In regards to her copying other bloggers: as a product of the 21st century, I know that there is very little that's artistically original in this society. All the great things seem to have already been discovered (e.g. pop art, mini skirts, adhesive nail polish), so I can sympathize with the plague of maintaining (or creating) originality. But you can be unique without resorting to plagiarism. Maybe what she's doing is totally unconscious and that she ends up mimicking other bloggers as a result of being saturated with images. Maybe she does it because she has no originality of her own and just purchases items that are popular at the moment. I don't begrudge her for either reasons, because that's what the term "mass market" means. But it's obvious from her popularity that this is what people want to read, so instead of disparaging her, shouldn't we reprimanding the "readers" of her blog?






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