Fashion week is over, brain has suffered roundly from the experience, and rebooting is a bitch. But since I promise to deliver some Plato with my Prada I think it is time to get conceptual!

In all of my musings I have been wondering why it is that fashion week is important? Why do we care? Nominally we must care because we as consumers and aficionados of fashion look forward to the release of new design. And yet when one works in an artistic and hence emotionally driven medium it is rare that one can really pinpoint that arrival of the new. So what did I learn about the new this fashion week?

To Quote Shirley Bassey singing for Propellerheads:

They say the next big thing is here, that the revolution is near, but to me it seems quite clear that it is all just a bit of history repeating. There is fashion, there is fad, and the joke is rather sad that it is all just a little bit of history repeating.

Herbert Blumer proposed in the sixties a general theory of fashion that focused fashion as a process of historical continuity. New fashions are also in relation to others-one being built on top of one another. Fashion thus is always about modernity in that it is of the times…

Now, I am a fan of interesting headwear, as well as a fan of capes. I find the latter romantic and the former something very few can carry, but when they can…oh my, how they can (particularly simultaneously)! When I was a teenager and university student, I used to enjoy watching Moammar Qaddafi on the nightly news, largely because of his outfits, many of which involved flamboyant capes and ornate headwear. But, as I grew to understand his politics, I became disgusted. Something about the whole terrorist/maniac, hate-filled, murdering tyrant thing turned me off. His look became, in my eyes, garish and over the top. I thought I would never love ornamental capes and robes and chic headwear (at least on men), ever again.

And I didn’t…until 2002, when I first laid eyes on Hamid Karzai, then interim leader of Afghanistan. I was taken with his charm and bravery, and smitten with his style. And I was not alone. He won praise from the House of Gucci for his green and white chapan — a traditional Uzbek cape — and ceremonial karakul hat. Karzai himself said, back then: “Everyone I meet asks me about my coats…When I addressed the UN Security Council, all the ambassadors wanted one.”

He’s already rescued the ladies (with help from the U.S. military) from having to wear burqas: Can a more free and chic Afghanistan remain only a dream?

Long-time readers will remember that in an earlier post, I noted that when Freddy Mercury sings “Bismillah” in the Queen anthem Bohemian Rhapsody, he is singing a phrase from the Quran—“In the name of Allah.” This phrase is ubiquitous in Islamic jewelry, art and, of course, religious rhetoric.

As this article recounts, Queen bootlegs were popular for years in Iran, and the government eventually relented and allowed a cassette of Queen’s Greatest Hits to go legit. And how could religious leaders justify this? By providing an explicitly Islamic message to Bohemian Rhapsody. The Iranian cassette includes a pamphlet with liner notes that

tells Queen fans that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil.

On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, “Bismillah”, and so regains his soul from Satan.

So you see, it’s a hymn!

In my opinion, anyone manufacturing apparel no matter how mundane, should be grateful and thank (insert your deity of preference) for the exclusive and even sometimes whacko couturiers. In my opinion, the press and consumer interest they generate amounts to the closest thing to an industry marketing group as we’re ever likely to get. I don’t even think that the controversy they generate is necessarily bad (just spell my name right); if it weren’t for couturiers, I think consumers would have given up on fashion long ago. Couturiers are the closest thing to a “Got Milk?” campaign as we’re ever going to get and it doesn’t cost us a dime.

In fact, one of the greatest benefits that the sometimes strange couturiers generate is maintaining perceived value -the retail price levels of apparel. As the haute designers charge ever more obscene prices, it makes our prices seem much more reasonable in comparison….

Has last season’s new minimalism already given way to the new maximalism? Some critics observing New York Fashion Week think so. But perhaps there’s more than a mindless swing of the fashion pendulum going on here.

The presence of passementerie and paillettes at the fall collections this week may be more indicative of a need to distinguish ever-more-expensive designer items from fast fashion knockoffs at H&M, Zara, and the like…

The Sartorialist

Some shows are just so beautiful it literally hurts.

This show captures everything I love about design.

Color, volume, texture, layering, mixing divergent references and best of all the collection always looks even better in the store than is does in runway photos.

Marc Jacobs has earned every bit of respect he has garnered in his career, and he still relatively young. So what has to happen for us to begin considering that he just may be the most important designer America has ever produced?

After reading a particular post from the Fashion Addict Diary, the Fashionable Kiffen is taking a break from the scheduled fashion week programming to discuss the difference between fashion industry people and “civilians”. Now, avid fashionistas sometimes wear things that are viewed as slightly ridiculous by the rest of the population. Platform pumps, ultra wide belts, and bubble skirts are just a few of the current array of items that immediately signal the wearer as an avid follower of fashion.

Generally, the most avant garde pieces seem eccentric to all but the most fashion forward among us, so what’s a girl to do? Tame your look to appeal to the masses? Move to NYC or Tokyo, where no one will bat an eye? Or just accept the confusion of the civilians as part and parcel of being the most fabulous one in the room?

In real life, jerks aren’t successful. Nobody wants to work for a jerk. If you’re a jerk, you’re going to have problems that more socially astute people will never have. You’ve created unnecessary barriers for yourself. This business is not the exclusive domain of hoity-toity design school graduates. Rather, the latter are the exception, not the rule. And again, fashion is not survival of the fittest one. There is lots of room in this business for talent and brains wherever you’re coming from. Successful companies are constituted of talented, hard working teams who are led by team oriented leadership. Success doesn’t mean mandating that your underlings comply with your slightest whims; there is no royalty here. Anyone can make it in this business. The messages propagated by Project Runway are unmitigated fiction that insults the commitment of people who’ve made this their chosen vocation. It is insulting to have one’s career summarized by such a caricature.

Lera, Fashion Addict Diary

Never in my life have a seen a party that was more packed with people, more sexually charged, and more over the top than the Heatherette after party. I still don’t know exactly how to describe it between the dancing drag queens, the girls on swings, the balloons filled with cash, the celebrities, the fashionistas, the downtown hip kids, and of course loads of alcohol and drugs.

Look at this lengthy article in the New York Magazine, which the Manolo has annotated below for your edification. It is like the horrifying, surreal, opera buffo stage version of the Paradise Lost.

Act One, Scene One. The curtain it raises on the procession of the damned, who shuffle across the stage paying obsequious homage to the Lord of Flies.

First, the aged crones in thrall to evil..

What can one talk about while waiting for Lagerfeld? Lagerfeld, of course. “Karl has the energy of … what? Twenty-five thousand Turkish elephants!” says socialite Anne Slater, wearing her big blue glasses and grinning up a storm. “He’s magnetic and powerful. I think he’s absolutely, devastatingly attractive.”

Then, the young slatterns, proud of their debasement…

“Karl is a genius!” exclaims Lindsay Lohan.

Next, the handmaidens of Asmodeus, eager to share their shame..

“Karl is the one person that makes me shy,” says throaty Bungalow 8 owner Amy Sacco.

Then, the greater demons, odious, cloven hooved beings who dwell in the lower rings of Hell…

There are many reasons to be interested in fashion, issues that I have enumerated time and time again here on this blog. But I feel like a broken record every time I say it because I am just on repeat and it isn’t getting us anywhere. But I am coming to the conclusion that Fashionweek is not one of the reasons to be interested in fashion…

I want people to hear my experiences if only to disabuse them of the notion that getting into the tents will be a magical experience. The only reason it seems exciting is because it is exclusive. You want access because you can’t have it. I don’t even have particularly good access, just a badge that gets me in the door. I can fight my way into many shows but too often the attitude has been we will just watch it from the monitor. To which I say no dice.

Gick

Yesterday, I did walk by in the late afternoon. It wasn’t raining, but there was a cruel, cold wind. Surrounding the enormous white tent were only ancient trees, bare cobblestones, empty benches and bistro tables, all blasted by the pitiless gale…

I began to have the fancy of the tent as a shifting distending entity, distorted by the shapes of elbows and heads pressing against its straining seams, like a thousand Alices had eaten their cakes and were sprouting ever-longer limbs. I waited for a giantess’ foot or a seven-foot nose to tear through one of the walls, but it never did. This flight of imagination should have been my first clue. The wicked west wind carried some feverish spore or beastie deep into my lungs, and today I have an unsettled cranium and a painful wheeze like a fourteen year-old model before her morning’s first cigar.

Ten years ago, the internet was still a relatively new phenomenon. And the venerable house of Chanel was not pleased when photographs from its collections appeared online immediately after the shows, enabling copyists around the globe to deliver those styles to stores even before the real merchandise was available. Before the Fall 1996 collection, audience members received the following warning (in hard copy, of course):

Unless duly authorized, any use, directly or indirectly, through any intermediate or not, with or without charge, in any part of the world, specifically on the Internet, on CD-ROM and on any other multimedia networks and devices, of any images of all or any part of the collection presented in this show, including any images of the models appearing in this show, is strictly prohibited.

Not satisfied with mere legal warnings, Karl Lagerfeld deluged the audience with so many looks and silhouettes that knockoff artists couldn’t select an iconic image from the collection. The next season, the designer received boos from photographers when he sent his looks for Chloe down a maze-like, difficult to shoot runway.

Tribunal of Good Taste

This is what Julie is wondering today.

And a Jack & Hill reader writes in: “Call me cranky, but with the except of Manolo, most of The PM fashion bloggers have no clue about what they’re looking at. They’re very busy writing about how they’re perceived, who’ve they’ve seen or met or waved to, the spectacle of the tents and not very much about the collections. I think the MSM fashion media is pretty safe from the blogger onslaught. “

Oh, it’s not as bad as all that, is it? Here Omiru is busy telling us what’s coming down the runway. And The Fashionable Kiffen has some trend analysis (keyword: volume).

The Sartorialist has the best candid backstage images around.

Miss Meghan has abandoned the shows in favor of a tour of boutiques in Manhattan’s meatpacking district, where the real celebrity/editor action is, while Andrea Tung takes you on a knitting-shop tour of the island.

A Dress A Day breaths a sigh of “finally, something I really like” here.

Tribunal of Good Taste has posted a series of fashion polls.

If you want to put your own two cents in, Glam.com has just now put up a public discussion forum dedicated to the shows.

Oh yes—and check back here tomorrow, when we’ll have video blogging courtesy of Fashion Tribes.

And just remember, if it didn’t suck just a little, it wouldn’t really be blogging…

www.answsers.com

Now that we’ve gotten a good degree of milage out of signaling theory, it’s time to focus on the other reality of social consumption – individual expression and identity. I believe that, beyond being a superficial indulgence or a proxy class war, fashion plays a positive role in stirring people to experiment and play with their identity and effectively drives them towards new experiences and personal growth.

Miscmash touched on this topic earlier, and I think that his comment cuts straight to the heart of the issue.

Whilst designer fashion does tend to resemble the innovator-laggard type cycle you describe, the street fashion system seems to be far more about curation and fine-tuning a longer term identity project.

Outside the tents at Bryant Park, fashion is adopted for both individual and social reasons. I’ve already addressed how signaling motivations affect the demand for fashion, but the next step is to understand how those motivations interact with consumption driven by personal taste and identity to produce aggregate fashion consumption patterns…

I have to yet attend a show that hit me in the stomach and made me think “Yes, this is fashion.” I am still looking for those moments of glory that I am sure are part of the fashion world experience.

My problem I think is that I don’t know exactly what my expectations are. I came into the experience of fashionweek with the idea that it would be a soul sucking and exhausting process but somewhere locked up in me I still wanted to believe. But believe what? Glamour, mystery and intrigue are for the beautiful and rich that populate the the theoretical realms of fashion that I have yet to experience.

I am sitting in betwen a random photographer boy in a too tight shirt, a “consultant” in a Monty Python esque suit (complete with decoder ring) and a man in a completely coordinated. yellow plaid suit. I guess a little bit of the oddity and glamour of fashionweek is right next to me.

Is this Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld or a demonic biker priest?

Why do designers put religious imagery on clothing and accessories? Pious devotion or multicultural respect; inspiration from religious sources; a blundering accident, hubris or a desire to get attention by seeming outre—these are a few of the more prominent reasons, of course.

Lagerfeld is, of course, far from the first prominent figure to use religious symbols in a subversive fashion—his garb reflects an anticlerical tradition in religious imagery that extends back through a pronounced anticlerical strain in European art to Jesus’ own inversion of temple imagery to challenge religious authorities…

Kenneth Cole, 2006

We’ve seen “bloat” dresses before, in fact, all year on the runways, but Kenneth Cole created something a little bit different; it’s a new shape for the woman’s body.

Many of us see the runway fashions as something not really for wearing, but it then concerns me when bloggers take various, hideous catwalk shots and use them to predict trends for the masses.

What the bloggers should do is post styles that we feel and which we want to become trends. Maybe it’s time for fashion bloggers to be an authority and a “first word.” Can we make things happen?

Maybe we don’t need to stop at setting trends for Internet readers, maybe we can someday (soon) start bigger changes. Perhaps, if we hold designers to our ideals, more beautiful clothes will be made.

Perhaps, you are doing something important, and together—we must be together—not one of us is small.

(And we won’t all have to look large.)

Since fashion markets are constantly evolving the primary problem for consumers is no longer spending a constrained income on a range of commodities, but instead spending a constrained amount of attention determining the various signaling attributes of various fashion options….

A closely related economic idea is the concept of bounded rationality, which basically states that decisions incur an ‘energy cost’ because people have a limited amount of reasoning power. If there are costs in making accurate decisions, then any conception of the consumer perfectly optimizing decisions would require an infinite amount of time and thought. This simply extends one of the fundamental laws of scarcity to thought processes. It is impossible knowingly to make an optimal decision in a changing environment, like fashion.

Backstage at Varvatos, by The Sartorialist

Some highlights from Fashion Addict Diary’s round-up of the Friday shows:

John Varvatos: Lenin Caps, double breasted jackets, skinny leg trousers etc. One model actually looked like a male version of Gemma Ward.

Heart of Truth: The dresses were red and symbolized “heart disease awareness”. My attention span is resistant to these things. The show had lots of great chick-flicky music so I was dancing. Fashion reporters hated me.

Dragana Ognjenovic: The suits would be perfect for a burial ceremony. She tries to cater to the tastes of the ambassadorial wives. Blah.

Akiko Ogawa: Liked it enough to not remember anything. I think almost every model in that show was from Russia, Ukraine or Belarus - poor victims of Soviet dentistry who never smile.

Baby Phat: I wouldn’t have survived the Baby Phat show if it wasn’t for all the drinks to sedate me… Kimora put on a big show which wasn’t really about the clothes - nobody wears Baby Phat, not even Kimora.

Kim Weinstein

Fashion is an industry driven by sex, and exclusivity, and is fed by an unwavering desire to embody those two attributes, let’s be real. When Julie said the shows are like a big trade show, I breathed a sigh of relief. What’s going on in Bryant Park is the theater of selling emotional crack. I struggle with being a part of that, that’s why my philosophy is, “you’re pretty already, you don’t really need that much to be prettier.” It’s fine to be a part of it, it’s so compelling because when everything looks right, everything seems right. Who do you think looks better: chubby Linsday Lohan, or puking, drunk, clenbuteral-abusing Linsday Lohan? Sadly, the latter. So it means something, of course. But just remember, when you’re buying into all of it you are financing the social and educational lives of the owners of the company. Just like cars, just like sugar, just like cigarettes.

Project Jay

Julie Fredrickson of Almost Girl has an interview with Jay McCarroll, last season’s winner of Project Runway, in which we learn that Jay’s vocabulary is at least as colorful as his wardrobe. Let’s just say that you won’t be seeing this side of Jay in Vogue.

The real André Leon Talley

As New York Fashion Week got underway on Friday, the (unwilling to be linked) Wall Street Journal offered advice to would-be gatecrashers at the see-and-be scene: beware the fashion police. Despite this imposing security detail, my own experience is that a determined fashionista can beg, buy, or sneak her way in with relative ease (assuming, of course, that a legitimate invitation is not forthcoming). It does, however, require a bit of advance research.

Impersonating fashion royalty might work for a lookalike — but it’s doubtful. And in the case of the WSJ’s “diminutive thirtysomething white woman” who claimed to be “Andrea Leon Talley,” it was definitely a howler.

I was so fortunate to get on the guest list of the MAC party… This party was celebrating their Chinoise-y collection and did so with live models and body paint.

It was a little bit of a weird atmosphere: these naked, painted girls stationed in tableaux around the perimeter of the room. It would have been my Lilly Bart moment, except I was not posing in a tableaux and I was not falling, falling…anyway. So I just stared snapping away, because I was alone and there was nothing else for me to do. I didn’t feel insecure, I felt very secure being alone in this club while groups of three and four fabulous people laughed up a storm; and I just snapped away. These girls were told to pose for whomever was shooting, obviously, because they gave me their all. It was a little creepy. They were kind of naked…

Julie Fredrickson, makeup & photo by Kim Weinstein, I Am Pretty, NYC

So many people have told me how lucky I am to be at the shows. I thought so too! I am at Fashionweek! From the outside the glamour, beauty, and excitement of Fashionweek seems so alluring…

Ohh the models, the editors, the clothing, the parties they exclaim! What could be better? Now I knew fashion was a tough business when I decided to make it my career. Yet I wasn’t entirely disabused of the notion that fashion still had a little bit of mystery left in it when I first arrived at the tents.

Now, as I sit hunched in an uncomfortable chair, surrounded by hundreds of other angry, hungry, and put-off editors, I feel like it is a nastier version of a trade convention. But of course it is a trade show, just one for the garment industry. The problem is that the general public doesn’t view it that way. So instead of being able to calmly view the collections, make informed decisions about potential trends, and generally catch up with work colleagues you are herded in and out of shows like cattle, treated poorly by confused PR women in black, and even occasionally yelled at by someone exclaiming “do you know who I am?”

Never behind the times, MIT had its own fashion show, with a project called “Seamless,” February 1st.

Immediately attractive to me was this TapTap:

The sense of touch is essential to emotional health and development. taptap is a wearable accessory that can record, distribute and play back affectionate touch. Designed to look like a normal scarf, taptap provides extra warmth and comfort by simulating the touch of a loved one.

The best design with my favorite science behind it was the Mathematical Knit concept. “Pleasing aesthetics are commonly based on mathematical proportions. This collection was designed to investigate if number patterns can be used to create design elements.” That is incredibly intriguing, and I’m pleased this designer wanted to use her nerdy brains to produce something visually attractive based on a scientific standard….

Fashion Tribes

My favorite part of Fashionweek? Besides waiting and being herded cattle-style into the shows, it’s the delightful first day of fashionweek when everyone waits, again cattle-style, in the press registration area - usually crammed into the back of one of the large, circus-sized white tents.

Normally, once you eventually shuffle to the front of the line, the journos pick up their badges, the photogs get their pix shot for their ID, and then everyone heads for the coffee area. Not this season, though. No. This season, apparently a new and improved system is now in place whereby a certain individual, who I now officially dub The Flaming Troll, is denying press passes to photographers. Much like the Seinfeld Soup Nazi, photographer after photographer got turned away when trying to register on-site, and one of my own FT photographers suffered the same fate. Apparently, in a triumph of bureaucracy and the machinations of petty power….

More images, blogging and podcasts at FashionTribes

I just got out of the John Bartlett show and let me just say I came out confused. The best feature of the show was by far the large canvas and brown leather carry-alls and the odd shoulder guards. However, the entire aesthetic of the show felt just slightly odd. It was a combination of lumberjack bearded men with Tobias Wolf Old School was not a look I can really grasp.

He played Led Zeppelin’s Viking Song. I came from the land of ice and snow? Excuse me? The show looked like it came from the land of WASP. I think my old boyfriend would have appreciated the aesthetic. Calling all Earth Firsters! We have found your designer! With lots of longjohns it was boyscout chic thrown with New England prep schools, dialing your WASPs who want to pretend they outdoorsys!

A recent look into the entertainment media’s portrayal of fashionistas has lately gotten me frustrated and fired up. “We” are being portrayed as shallow and “female dogs,” for one thing. Another thing is that when writers and creators of entertainment gear toward fashionistas, the characters are still no better—they are inexplicably rich, with only shopping—and men—on the mind. I find myself not even able to grasp the long list of designer garments in these novels (blogs fare better for the pictures). What happened to creative descriptions that make readers feel like we are there?

Fashion blogging is changing the fashion world, we all know that. ‘Style’ is on everyone’s radar, an achievable goal, and the average person no longer feels dictated to when it comes to what they wear. Fashion blogging grew from this new democracy.

But fashion blogging can cross the line, becoming traditional media put on the web and given a deceptively “real” voice. Advertising dollars are that line. It’s one thing to put ads on your blog to generate income; it’s another to just shill. The future of fashion blogging, and blogging’s role in the industry, depends on avoiding that fate. Fashion blogging is original content by the people, of the people and for the people. (Excuse me now while I powder my wig.)

flickr

Fashion Week is a ritual in which the many sing the praises of a creative few. There are reasons for this, of course, but we’ll save that another day. What lifts my spirits more is the emergence of a yin to the dominant yang.

This pendant is a perfect example of what MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld calls the trend toward personal fabrication. The source of the picture? Not a jewelry store, not a design magazine, but a flickr post. The description says it all:

“I designed this myself and had a silversmith friend work it up for me … .”

In my dream world of the future, I’m not hoping for space tourism, food pills, and personal jetpacks (okay, I’m still crossing my fingers for the jetpacks). I am excited about infinite customization, smart (or even nano) manufacturing, and efficient marketplaces. If I want something (say, a pair of round-toed 2” heels with an ankle strap, in brown suede, or a lemon-yellow silk/Lycra short-sleeved cardigan sweater with a peter pan collar, pearl buttons, and 3/4 sleeves), I just spec it (including exact dimensions) and put it up for bids through an electronic matchmaking service.

OK deep breath….no need to panic…everything will be fine once you take the necessary precautions.

It’s really not as bad as it looks. The green gauze acts as a filter between your cavities and the virus emanating from a sick bird. The sleeves and pockets are filled with soap & water so that your hands are constantly in a state of thorough ablution. The orange waistband sort of holds it all together like a red string in the Kabbalah universe.

President Bush’s State of the Union address will have come as a welcome boost to retailers and importers, particularly his caution that a retreat to trade protectionism would relegate the US to a ‘second-rate’ economy. But just as his sentiments will have pleased some parts of the US textile and clothing industry, there will be those – particularly the textile lobbyists who campaigned so hard for safeguards last year and rejoiced when the US-China bilateral deal was agreed in November – who will be equally disappointed by his free trade leanings….

Here it is! My first official posts from the tents. I am waiting in the press lines. More dispatches to come. It is raining and nasty, making many a fashionista rather wet and mussy. It is a waste of makeup and blow drying sort of day. Welcome to Fashionweek guys!

Julie Fredrickson of Almost Girl is liveblogging the runway shows from Bryant Park. Here’s a list of upcoming video interviews she’ll be thoughtout the week, starting with Constance White, Ebay’s Style Director.

Lesley Scott of FashionTribes will also be liveblogging from Bryant Park.

Chinese/Canadian luxury brand Ports

It seems that fashion is heading East. China has opened up a market for luxury fashion, but will the world be watching China’s own emerging talent?

China is making efforts to rebrand its cultutal identity through Shanghai’s development as a new world. A dreamy yet modern city with parts of it that takes after the like of Paris. This is where the new yuppie generation resides. Fashion has become a major part of its development as a cultural center…. Though foreign companies have made its way into China, what will China’s exports be? China is trying to shed its sweatshop labor reputation and promoting its own young emerging designers….

La Retrosessuale never ceases to be amazed by the ingeniously common-sensical initiatives undertaken by New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg… the latest of which is the donation of all the illegal high fashion knockoffs confiscated by the NYPD to Hurricane Relief.

Amir Normandi

Twelve years ago this week, a woman named Homa Darabi tore off her chador in the middle of a public square in Tehran and set herself on fire. She died shouting: Death to tyranny! Long live freedom! Long live Iran!

Homa was 54 at the time. She had grown up in a secular family in Tehran, earned her medical degree in the US, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. Returning to Tehran in 1976, she founded the first children’s psychiatric clinic. She supported democratic revolution, but withdrew from politics, smarting, when the fundamentalists took the lead.

After the 1979 revolution, Homa refused to comply with the rules of hijab, which mandated the covering of women.

Her sister, Parvin Darabi, described many of the psychologically brutalizing experiencesNormandi_1 her sister underwent as a result of this decision, including this, in a 2004 speech to the Jerusalem Summit:

As a prominent psychiatrist, her services were requested by devastated and helpless parents whose daughters were subjected to flogging and beating for such violations as wearing make up and nylons. These devastated parents would beg her to go to the courts and declare their daughters insane to suspend their punishment.

Julie Fredrickson

From Glam.com’s Pre-Fashionweek Panel Discussion, with Constance White, Ebay’s Style Director; Deborah Schultz of Glam.com; Lesley Scott, Editor-in-Chief of Fashiontribes; men’s fashion blogger The Sartorialist.

How is blogging changing the fashion industry?

Constance: Fashion used to be very dictatorial! It was the designer and then the vision of the editors from there. But this is breaking up. Fashion is much more democratic…

Sartorialist: Anyone can be part of it. Even if you are in Indiana (or India!) you can take part in fashion.

Deborah: It is a great opportunity to listen in on what “the people” are saying. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. Managing a brand isn’t as hard as people think because people are forgiving because there is passion in the blogging space…

Constance: Blogs have a huge impact on the idea that people are taking control of fashion….

Lesley: Google is my archivist! Once something is up it is there forever. Things aren’t limited by the newstand.

After 30 years of rocking, Lemmy may not be beautiful, but he’s not foolish enough to throw out his hat just because you’ve seen it.

As Fashion Tribes is hosting an ongoing Fashion Week blogtacular, I wanted to post a little something re: notions fashionable so you’d know I’ll be on the case.

Especially as I live in Manhattan, I am intending to dabble in occasional, on-site fashion blogging during FW. However, as I’m unconnected and uninformed, I may have to satisfy myself with showing up to count the empty pizza boxes out back (you know you’re curious) and asking security personnel and passersby if they consider my trousers Art…

As Fashion Week prepares for its debut Friday in New York, something else of a fashion revolution is happening tonight at MIT. Yes, you heard me right, MIT, aka Brain Power Central. Seamless is a fashion and technology show at MIT showcasing some of the most innovative work from talented designers who are infusing fashion with science and technology, helping to reinterpret what the meaning of fashion can be.

Diana Eng, currently of Project Runway fame, is presenting some of her work there tonight. One of which is the “Blogger Hoodie” pictured…

www.fashiontribes.com

The crumbling power of traditional media has been a fave topic on the blogosphere of late, but Final Fashion brings up an interesting point: the new media and traditional glossy magazines may not actually need to be in competition. Where blogs are for thinking, magazines are for dreaming. If glossy magazines leave the fashion reportage - both light and heavy - to the online media, they are then free to focus on what they do best: provide eye candy at its finest. As repositories of the best photography and illustration, high quality writing, and extremes of creativity, glossies provide an affordable & tactile connection with high fashion.

Back in December, Cathy Horyn wrote an article in the New York Times about how fashion is Two Clicks Behind. That is, the processes of the fashion industry (and particularly the mainstream fashion media) hasn’t caught up to the speed of the Internet. Julie of Almost Girl, however, believes that, thanks to fashion bloggers, the fashion media isn’t all Two Clicks Behind anymore—in fact, some of us are Two Clicks Ahead.

My question is: What happens when the fashion media is Two Clicks Ahead? What does this mean for the fashion ecosystem?

My fellow fashionisti,

A century ago, 1st Wave Feminism gave women the right to vote — and the ability to breathe and move unrestricted by corsets and trailing skirts. Designers like Counterfeit Chic’s Patron Saint/Avenging Angel Coco Chanel took pride (and profit) in setting women free.

In the latter half of the 20th century, 2nd Wave Feminism dramatically expanded our opportunities to make career and lifestyle choices — and our ability to leave the house without a uniform of elaborately coifed hair, lacquered faces, restrictive “foundation garments,” hats, and gloves. OK, we also veered from one decade of shapeless, earth-toned, artsy-craftsy outfits to another decade of power suits with giant shoulders and floppy bow ties based on men’s suits. But the thought was there — witness the recent rebirth of Diane von Furstenberg’s 1972 woman-on-the-go wrap dress.

Today, a 3rd Wave is gathering momentum, carrying with it a commitment to individual creativity and playful paradox…

Bush Library

Elizabeth Hawes

Sometimes, I want to quote Elizabeth Hawes, and say “fashion is spinach,” and I want to say to hell with it.

However, when talking about fashion, I insist on making the distinction between fashion and style. Fashion is of the now; style is perennial. Fashion is something you follow; style is something you forge. Fashion is about being part of the herd; in with the in-crowd; style is about one’s own vision, about idiosyncracies and quirks. Stylish people often set fashions—in fact fashion designers often have incredibly narrow personal styles: look at The Lagerfeld, Elbaz, and Carolina Herrera and try to tell me they are fashionable rather than stylish!—and fashionable people may in fact have style, but one does not necessarily follow from the other.

Julie Fredrickson

I am concerned. Let me say that again. I am deeply concerned about the state of fashion today. Fashion is the provence of rich, superficial women bickering over seat placements at fashion shows and besting each other at who can eat the least. The fashion elite exert more authority and influence over the way American women think, dress, and understand their self image than anyone else on the planet. But this is changing.

I have two concerns I wish to raise today about the state of fashion. I want to address the way we understand fashion as an industry and the way we understand content as consumers of fashion and fashion journalism…