It’s Sunday afternoon during the fourth day of Fashion Week in New York City, and I’m standing in the middle of the event’s headquarters, the plaza at Lincoln Center. To one side is a hallway where most of the editors, buyers, stylists and journalists — the ones with actual invites to the fashion shows — enter. To my left is a crew of tourists, photographers, models and wannabes. This is the week that fashion becomes a public spectacle, a red carpet parade that lasts all week before moving on to London, Milan and Paris.
Carine Roitfeld, the former editor of Vogue Paris, saunters through. A few photographers snap her photo; one taps her arm and asks her to pose, which Roitfeld does, grinning. A few fans run at Giuliana Rancic. Paris and Nicole Hilton appear, and a swarm descends, forming a three-person-deep circle around them like gnats around rotten fruit with a buzz of snapping shutters. Glenda Bailey, editor of Harper’s Bazaar, arrives and politely steps aside so the clicking mass can capture the blond-haired, red-lipped Joanna Hillman, the magazine’s market editor, in whom they seem much more interested. Michelle Harper, brand consultant and street-style A-lister, walks swiftly through with the swagger of someone used to being part of the parade. WSJ’s neon-haired Preetma Singh exits and enters anonymously. And the shutters again pop for celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.
In the courtyard of the anonymous, a set of twins in coordinating leather jumpsuits with platform sandals pose for two dozen shutterbugs, most holding iPhones. A few very young, very skinny model wannabes sulk around aimlessly, making eyes at any curious lens. Two men in colorful, perfectly tailored suits are having a conversation, pretending not to notice the gaggle of amateur shutterbugs. "Can you get the purse?" asks another woman to a man holding a hulking camera, as she shifts her structured bag to the front of her torso.
A few blocks away, I pass Phil Oh, the street-style photographer behind the popular StreetPeeper blog, walking toward Lincoln Center. In front of me, a teenager grabs her friend’s arm and whispers, “Wasn’t that StreetPeeper?”
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Cupcakes and Cashmere
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honestlywtf
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the man repeller
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style bubble
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HonestlyWTF
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bryanboy
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ann street studio
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the sartorialist
Media moguls on the front row
There was a time when Fashion Week was for the serious professionals, the die-hards in black. A decade ago, the rest of us could only peek at the latest runway news via Conde Nast’s Style.com slideshows and the Tim Blanks–hosted, syndicated television show Fashion File. But of course, the fashion-hungry flocked online with the same fervor as other consumers. Print magazines, notoriously slow to adapt to the speed and appetite of the digital world, eventually became a luxurious complement to blogs that offered a daily dose of news, street style, outfit inspiration and community. And now, as print editors head to the tents twice a year with varying levels of fame, it’s the bloggers who have just as much (if not more) arm-grabbing, celebrity cachet. As leading fashion news site Fashionista declared earlier this year, the style blogger is “more powerful than ever.”
Why? Because these creators are transforming the publishing and fashion industries while making digital fashion coverage more prevalent, democratic and monetizable. In some ways, this is because of access. The days of bloggers fighting for seats at fashion shows are long gone.
It’s also about their multifaceted role in the digital fashion sphere. While all bloggers have a niche and a unique lens through which they communicate with readers, their role is dichotomous. They are at once the journalist and the subject, the celebrity and the adoring, the shill and the critic.
This apparent contradiction is nothing new to fashion journalism — magazine editors have been part of the fold for ages — and magazines have always covered the same brands and companies they rely on for ad dollars. But the growth of the digital fashion world and the continued rise of street-style blogs have intensified the role and the range of fashion bloggers. It’s also intensified the attention around fashion and the shows (hence the circus at Lincoln Center). There are more photographers and more bloggers. Everything is simply more exposed.
As a result, fashion consumers and industry enthusiasts are more informed than ever before. Backstage photos, catwalk videos on Twitter and Instagram, shots from the events and the after parties are all available in real time. Everyone’s a publisher; everyone’s an editor. It’s a business, and whoever can get the most followers wins.
The Instigators
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style bubble
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the sartorialist
In 2005, Scott Schuman became a North Star of sorts. He launched The Sartorialist as a hobby, wanting to chronicle sharp-suited men (and a few women) on the streets of New York. He was a self-taught photographer, but as he developed a stronger visual style, his audience grew. Within a year, he was chronicling fashion shows for GQ.
Schuman is credited with commercializing street style. After all, Bill Cunningham had been documenting street style for The New York Times for decades. But Schuman turned editors, formerly known to few outside of magazine staffs, into commodities. Pictures of the sleek (Roitfeld), the quirkily polished (Giovanna Battaglia) and the impossibly wild (Anna Dello Russo) drove readers and advertisers to his blog, and he, in turn, became a marketer for their personal brands.
“I think street-style photographers created their own hell,” says Lauren Sherman, a fashion journalist and Fashionista editor-at-large. “Street-style photography during Fashion Week now is like paparazzi. They’ve created stars out of these people. They have several outfits a day. It’s all choreographed. It’s completely staged.”
Susanna Lau — or Susie Bubble — is one of these stars, though arguably the first to create her own fanbase by covering her own looks. She started blogging at Style Bubble in 2006 to chronicle her style and fashion musings and developed a devoted audience for her outfit-a-day posts. In many ways it was digital kismet — her eccentric style was saccharine fodder for the burgeoning crowd of street-style bloggers. By 2009, her site was attracting 25,000 readers a day.
Schuman and Lau were part of a growing community. The Internet quickly fell in love with Tommy Ton of Jak & Jil, Oh of StreetPeeper, Bryan Grey Yambao aka Bryanboy and Garance Doré. These street-style bloggers (or, perhaps more accurately, digital editors and fashion photographers) created a new marketplace for visual ideas online. In December 2009, a gasping headline ran across The New York Times’ Style section, “Bloggers Crash Fashion’s Front Row.” Tavi Gevinson, the 13-year-old blogger extraordinaire behind Style Rookie, had been seated at Marc Jacobs and Rodarte; Bryanboy was in the front row at Dolce & Gabbana, along with Schuman, Doré and Ton;
Bubble snagged invites to Gucci, Chanel and Lanvin. Persistently late to pop culture trends, the Times’ headline was the final din that bloggers, formerly a populist, second-class cadre of fashion journalists, were now just part of the mix.
To be clear, getting into the shows was never the point, but rather an indicator of their influence, as was the way brands started courting them. In 2008, Schuman was featured in Gap’s fall campaign, and the following year, he published his first book of photographs. He has since done work for Burberry, Japanese luxury brand Lane Crawford and GQ. Bubble was also in a Gap campaign. Marc Jacobs named a handbag after Bryanboy. Doré has collaborated with Kate Spade, J. Crew and Kering (formerly PPR) and also has a column in French Vogue. And Gevinson launched her own magazine — Rookie.
The Individualists
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fashion toast
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the glamourai
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Cupcakes and Cashmere
Of course, you can’t talk about fashion blogging and influence without mentioning the personal style bloggers who have turned selfies into media empires. Often referred to as a pioneer, Rumi Neely has been taking candid and casual shots of her outfits on Fashion Toast since 2007, when she set up a tripod in front of her garage door. Her influence has continued, as has her role in fashion’s front row. She’s designed for RVCA and signed with NEXT Management in 2011. To her more than 330,000 Instagram followers, her view of New York Fashion Week this fall included partying with Terry Richardson and the Brant brothers; mugging for the camera with Bryanboy; and taking in the catwalks of Philip Lim, Tommy Hilfiger, House of Herrera, Herve Leger, Yigal Azrouel, Rebecca Minkoff, and Rag & Bone.
Another major presence was Kelly Framel, a designer and stylist who started The Glamourai as a side project. “I've never wanted to be a salesperson… I want to be a storyteller,” Framel says. “My job is not to report or to sell; my job is to inspire.”
During this fall’s Fashion Week, she hosted an event for Karen Millen at the brand’s SoHo store; sat in the front row at Karen Walker (along with other bloggers Susie Bubble and Hanneli Mustaparta of Hanneli.com), Diane von Furstenberg and Dannijo (with Jamie Beck of Ann Street Studio); and showcased her love of a Nina Ricci handbag over Twitter, Instagram and on her site.
For Emily Schuman of Cupcakes and Cashmere, a lifestyle blog with an enormous readership, the key move was to make her blog an all-inclusive look into her life, including her outfits and her recipes. "I speak to readers like talking to a friend," she told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. "Even my mom is the first one to say that posting photos of how to put together a bouquet and how to bake cookies is not revolutionary, but it's how you package it together." She left a full-time job in advertising in 2010 to dedicate her days to her site’s 120,000 daily readers. Since then, she’s published a book and signed a deal to produce branded products. She’s also a guest blogger for Estee Lauder.
One reason these sites have become important for brands and adored by hundreds of thousands of readers is because they are instructive. Every outfit has a link to the brand; every look serves as a what-to-wear guide. Erica Chan Coffman and Lauren Kolodny of HonestlyWTF and Erica Domesek of P.S.-I Made This… have proven that there is an incredible market for DIY glamour. And, like Schuman, they show how food and fashion can co-exist.
These tastemakers also offer immediate gratification. Because they present fashion in nearly diary-like format and post through social media immediately, their sites are often the fastest delivery service for news, context or eye candy.
“They are powerful because they talk directly to their audiences, and their audiences are super engaged.”
Most important, these creators have a unique point of view, an evergreen form of currency in art and publishing. “Brands are making them powerful,” Sherman says. “They are powerful because they talk directly to their audiences, and their audiences are super engaged. You can’t measure the impact of an advertisement in a magazine the way you can measure the impact of a photo on a website.” Advertisers love the ability to measure influence with hard data that comes from click-thru rates and sales.
The Mavericks
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into the gloss
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the man repeller
“I do think that we’re in an interesting time right now,” says Holly Stair, a fashion consultant and the co-founder of Fohr Card, a directory of fashion blogs with verified stats. “A lot of brands are looking for the real, true creatives.”
One of the most prized creative upstarts right now is Emily Weiss. A former beauty editor for Elle, Weiss launched Into the Gloss with nearly immediate success. Suddenly, the online fashion community had a glossy digital outlet and access to the makeup bags and bathroom cabinets of some of the most idolized personalities in fashion. Plus, Weiss’ model-like good looks worked perfectly with the site’s strong focus on photography. The blog (in addition to Weiss) has become a favorite subject of the press, with mentions in fashion magazines all over the world as well as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Another voice that’s shaping the digital fashion conversation is Leandra Medine, the blogger and stylist behind The Man Repeller. Her Annie Hall-meets-Jerry Hall style, coupled with her idiosyncratic editorial voice and penchant for over-sharing, has made her one of the most successful fashion upstarts. She’s designed products for shoe brands Del Toro and Superga, jewelry company Dannijo, and clothiers PJK and Gryphon. Her first book, Man Repeller: Seeking Love, Finding Overalls, was released in mid-September.
Interestingly, it’s common for style and fashion bloggers to translate their digital prowess into the more traditional trappings of success in publishing and branding by inking deals for books, licensed products and magazine guest-editing stints. The benefits of those types of deals, of course, work both ways. Publishing houses and product brands benefit from the bloggers’ ingrained audience, much like any other celebrity, and the blogger gets another avenue of revenue and a broader audience.
“It’s all part of the democratization of fashion and celebrity.”
Just as movie and music stars learned to capitalize on their fame in the mid-90s — displacing models on the covers of fashion magazines and amassing perfume lines, advertising campaigns and becoming the subject of an intense paparazzi-fueled publishing industry — the fashion industry has expanded exponentially from the traditional monthly glossies and the bi-annual shows to a giant circus of personalities. Its brightest stars are making money for themselves, for publishers and for brands.
Digital fashion journalism and the prevalence of bloggers “has just pushed everyone to be more open and brand themselves more,” Sherman says. “You have to do that or you will not survive.”
